June Blog

Dear Friends in Faith,
Are you lonely? …I’m only asking the question because my encounters with people in the past few weeks have convinced me that there is a pandemic of loneliness in our society today.
I was talking with a single friend who shared that he didn’t have any relatives younger than he and was wondering aloud who would take care of him in his old age. Another acquaintance emailed me and wrote about the lack of affection from his partner and how he had become addicted to drugs to “hide his pain.” A woman tracked down our church from our website and gave me a call. In subsequent emails and calls she spoke about moving down to our area; in every single communication she talked wistfully about her hope of finding “a lifelong partner.” Another guy I met shared the frustration he had with his partner’s abuse and how he feared that the relationship was at an end. So, too, a wife spoke to me about her worst fear—that her husband would leave her. Yet another woman told me about her inability to share her thoughts with her husband. “He just doesn’t understand,” she said. Still another friend became somber and sad while talking about living alone with no one to come home to. My own mother has become discouraged because she has to make so many decisions on her own now that my father has had a stroke; and my father, for his part, is feeling the abandonment of being in a nursing home for rehab—a very scary experience for him. People have shared their weariness from the burden of caring for ailing spouses, the loneliness of being widowed, and the inner pain they suffer from dealing with demons from the past that keep haunting them. I’ve heard all of this and more in just the past few weeks! Mother Teresa was right when she said that the greatest disease of humankind is not cancer or TB or AIDS or polio, but loneliness.
If so many people are lonely; if single people, spouses, partners, and widows are all lonely; if those in the church and outside the church, those we know well and those we just met are all walking solo through life and discouraged, what are we supposed to do? Just this: Be family to them!
We can’t solve everyone’s problems. We aren’t God! We don’t have enough money, enough contacts, enough wisdom or time to rescue everyone from their desperation…but we do have the ability to listen, to care, to help people understand that, even though they may feel alone, they really aren’t alone. I couldn’t change the circumstances for any of the people that shared their lonely feelings with me, but I did listen and encourage them; I responded to their emails and helped them hope. It may not seem like much, but it means the world to those who feel abandoned and disheartened.
If you aren’t lonely, then help someone who is. But if you do find yourself feeling lonely, then look for someone to share with. Ask God to send an angel to walk with you and help you through the valley in your life; just make sure that you keep your eyes open for that special person you’re praying for. God promises never to abandon us; and one of the ways God shows us that truth is to send someone to be family to us. When we are all part of the family God intends, none of us will feel alone.
With affection for you, Pastor Carlan