Loneliness is not just an American problem, but also a global issue. Recent studies suggest that 40% of the world’s population feel lonely. The situation in Britain was such that Prime Minister Theresa May in 2018 appointed a Ministry of Loneliness. In our own context in America, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published an advisory identifying loneliness as a new public health epidemic: “Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation has been an underappreciated public health crisis that has harmed individual and societal health.”
Yea, loneliness will kill you. The body does keep score and, because we are made in God’s image, it means that being alone is not the way we are supposed to live. So odious to God is this idea of being alone that even in the perfect world, before sin enters, God utters the first (and I say it reverently) “not good” about his creation—and it is against aloneness. As if to highlight the idea that to be human is to be in relationship with others, where we know and are known. It is a powerful picture of who God is and what he designed us to be, is it not?
Yet, here we find ourselves in a land of plenty, where people have never felt more alone. This Sunday we will talk about how the gospel can make us signposts in a strange land. How grace makes room and gathers the lonely into a circle of love. Perhaps our mission is not so much to go out but to but to invite in….
Hope to see you Sunday. Remember, we wrap up our training classes during the Sunday School hour and then have the glorious opportunity to linger together as a family in the presence of God. I can’t wait.