The years of solitary grief are long and heavy, and the heart cries out for a helpmate, for the voice of companionship in an empty house. This pang is not strange to your Maker; He formed us for fellowship. But observe where your truest comfort lies in this trial. Our blessed Lord Himself walked the loneliest path ever trod. In His utmost need, when He most yearned for human sympathy, they all forsook Him and fled. He was left alone. Yet hear His own words out of that forsaken hour: "I am not alone, because the Father is with Me."
Here is your first and firmest ground. The loneliness you feel is a chamber into which Christ can enter, for He is well acquainted with grief and solitude. Before you look to any other remedy, draw near to Him who was left utterly alone that you might never be finally forsaken. There is a depth of fellowship with the Man of Sorrows that can sweeten the bitterest cup of isolation. Has this been your first resort? Drink waters out of your own cistern, out of the well that springs up in Christ Jesus, or the soul will go gadding abroad for comfort from cisterns that can hold no water.
The words of our Lord in Matthew stand firm and unsoftened: marrying a divorced woman constitutes adultery, for the first covenant is broken only by death or fornication. This is a hard saying, and many would have me smooth it over. I dare not. Yet the question you truly ask is not only about the lawfulness of an act, but about the rightness of the desire itself. That aching want is not in itself a sin, any more than hunger is gluttony. But it becomes a danger when it grows into a clamoring demand that would lead you away from simple obedience. The great matter is not whether you want to marry again, but whether you are walking in such intimate communion with your Redeemer that His will is your meat and drink, and His companionship fills the vacancy within. Examine, then, whether this longing springs from a lawful wish or from an inward departure, a mental unfaithfulness that seeks comfort elsewhere rather than in your Lord alone.
Yet there is a word of tender hope I must not withhold, not to license sin, but to lift up the bruised reed. Consider Matthew, the publican, sitting at the receipt of custom. The Lord saw him, all that he was and all that he was not, and spoke the word of effectual grace: "Follow Me." And Matthew arose and left all. Did our Lord cast him off because his hands were stained with the coin of extortion? No, for the Son of David came to call sinners to repentance. You say, "I am old and my past is a ruin." So it is. But the same voice that quickened Matthew can speak peace and purpose into your soul this very hour. The Master is not looking for those who have kept every jot of the law without a fracture, for then none would be called. He calls the broken, the ashamed, the weary, and says, "Follow Me." The question of a second marriage becomes secondary when the soul is swallowed up with the glory of that summons.
Set your heart, then, upon this one thing: to hear Him. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him." Let His Word be your sole arbiter, and let His presence be your deepest joy. If He shall be pleased to give you, in time, a clear and lawful path according to His ordinance, it will be His own doing, and you will receive it with trembling gratitude. But if not, if your solitary path remains unbroken until you step into the marriage supper of the Lamb, then His grace shall prove more than sufficient. The Father's company made the deserted Savior more than conqueror in His dark Gethsemane. That same Father is with you now. Are you not yet possessed of this pearl of great price? Cry after Christ until you can say, "I am not alone, because the Father is with me," and the keen edge of this trial shall be turned into a door of hope.