The Cure for Loneliness

The Cure for Loneliness

All the lonely people

Where do they all come from?

All the lonely people

Where do they all belong?

Eleanor Rigby by John Lennon and Paul McCartney

How is it possible to be in the middle of a crowd, people all around you . . . and be lonely?

It’s not only possible, it’s probable. How many people in America today are always in the middle of the crowd, but are lonely?

Is it because they are trying to find their life in the crowd?

Eugene Peterson, in his book Run With The Horses, writes, “Any part of our lives that is turned over to the crowd makes it and us worse. The larger the crowd, the smaller our lives.”

More that any other factor, a teen-ager craves the approval of his peers, and the things he or she practices are likely the results of peer pressure. Adversely, it is probable that his or her worst fear is disapproval from piers.

When the one-room school where I grew up closed, and my class of five was moved to the larger school 15 miles away, my life changed quite rapidly.

Why? Because I was exposed to a new set of peers. They liked me and instantly accepted me, but with acceptance came certain requirements. I was expected to do the things they did.

Culture shock! I had never before heard among my piers, filthy talk about the opposite sex . . . and we were only in the sixth grade!

The unspoken rule was that I was to join in, or at least to listen. Their talk make me extremely uncomfortable.

In the next few years I started smoking and drinking with the crowd and chasing girls. Monday at school became the day of drinking stories from the previous Saturday night. The one with the best story, won.

How foolish and empty! This is often what it means to be part of the crowd, to have lots of “friends.” Ahh . . . but what kind of friends? Was this what it meant to be happy, to be truly alive?

But the loneliness persisted . . .

Again, I quite from Eugene Peterson; “. . . every time that we retrieve a part of our life from the crowd and respond to God’s call to us, we are that much more ourselves, more human. Every time we reject the habits of the crowd and practice the disciplines of faith, we become a little more alive.”

I didn’t become truly alive until I turned my back on the popular rock group I was in and told the leader player I was quitting to follow Jesus.

That was also a Monday. The previous Saturday night we had held our most successful dance to date, drawing over 300 people, exceeding the population of the town.

Monday morning I quit . . . turned my back on the crowd and began a new life.

I was in search of true life, and I found it.

Jesus also said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find, knock, and it will be opened to you.”

Matthew 7:7 NKJV

For me, it didn’t come all at once; it came by degrees.

If you are truly “born again,” the first thing you will discover, is that you have a hunger for God.

All the truth you will ever need is in the Bible . . . and it’s free.

When he was 18, my best friend in Bible college, many times would share his testimony. He had experienced a spiritual awakening at a missionary conference. Immediately he obtained Good News For Modern Man, a contemporary translation of the New Testament, and he said he literally devoured it. He couldn’t put it down. He read it through, cover to cover, and then he started at the beginning and read it through again.

There is a reason for that. The Word of God is alive and when we consume it, we become alive. It satisfies the hunger of our inner man, who we truly are.

Hebrews 4:12 says: The word of God is the cure for loneliness. “When we read it, we are “no longer alone.”

There are probably more “dusty Bibles” in America than any other country in the world. Bibles are everywhere. The hidden treasure, the Bible, is everywhere., but those same Bibles are often never cracked.

The crowd doesn’t satisfy. True happiness lies in consuming ultimate truth.

You may consume large quantities of vitamins or health foods for your body, but your soul, your inner self remains unfed . . . and you are lonely.

You may be constantly consuming large quantities of music that has no truth in it, and you inner self remains unfed. And still . . . you are lonely.

You may constantly be attending events of all kinds, or hanging out at the bar every night, but it doesn’t feed your inner self.

Start reading the Bible!

The answer is all around you, hidden in “dusty Bibles,” but in plain sight.

The Bible! What your inner self craves is the Bible, the only ultimate truth in the universe.

pick it up, open it, and read it.

If you give it a chance, I guarantee, you will never be lonely again.

. . . And you will discover Jesus, who is the friend that sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24).