Are You Lonesome Tonight?
It’s ironic that in a crowded world of 7 billion people, we can feel so terribly alone. Someone has said, ‘a city is a place where thousands of people are alone together.’ In a shrinking world we’ve never lived closer together, yet we’ve never lived further apart.
Sprawling estates, blocks of flats, gated communities, dividing walls. It’s interesting when you travel abroad to see how nearly every home has a fence and a gate. How many neighbours do we really know, apart from a nodding acquaintance? Remember the old days when you could leave your key in the front door. Now people could be dead for days before anyone finds out. Only one thing worse than living in loneliness, that’s dying alone.
Songs reflect this feeling of loneliness.
Roy Orbinson – ‘Only the Lonely’
Elvis Presley – ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ Beatles – ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ Gilbert O’Sullivan – ‘Alone again, naturally’
Hank Williams – ‘I’m so lonesome I could die’ Celine Dion – ‘All by Myself’
All kinds of classes and creeds suffer from it. (So many comedians and showbiz people have died alone)
Difference between ALONENESS and LONELINESS.
ALONENESS (solitude) is something you choose, something you need, it’s having your space. But it’s usually temporary. Even Jesus, the Son of God, feeling at times He needed to be alone, went up a mountain, went into the wilderness, into a garden, went on a boat. Taking time to think, to pray, to meditate, to reflect, to hear from God, to decide, to plan etc. It’s deliberately coming apart to rest awhile.
LONELINESS is different. It’s unwanted, it’s being apart rather than coming apart. It can happen through loss of a friend, a partner, loss of a family member, or loss of a job, career, community or culture. Loss of confidence. Through a failure in your life, (Like Peter) can be self-inflicted. Being not friendly – selfish.
Prov.18:1 “A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire…”
Difference between ISOLATION and INSULATION.
ISOLATION has to do with CIRCUMSTANCES, INSULATION has to do with ATTITUDE.
Often people feel isolated because of their circumstances. Feel cut-off, separated, uncared for, unnoticed, unloved, and unnecessary. But insulation has to do with attitude. Some people not wishing to be hurt, or used, or taken advantage of, try to insulate themselves. They wrap themselves around with layers of distrust and suspicion. They disconnect with those who try to reach out to them. They retreat, go into a shell, build a moat around them and pull up the drawbridge. But by insulating themselves, they become even more lonely.
Loneliness has many a cause. But loneliness has a cure.
1.The Fellowship of God.
In the Past Deut. 2:7 “The Lord your God has been with you.”
In the Present Josh. 1:9 “The Lord your God is with you.”
In the Future 2 Sam. 14:17 “The Lord your God will be with you.”
Jesus: “Lo I am with you always, even unto the end” “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
2. The Fellowship of God’s People.
Psalm 68:5-6 “A Father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy habitation. God sets the solitary in families…”
We need the family of God – We need the fellowship of God’s people.
3. The Fellowship of a Friend.
Solomon in Prov.17:17 “A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity.”
4. Be a Friend.
Proverbs 18:24 “A man that has friends must show himself friendly.”
“Seldom can a heart be lonely, If it seeks a lonelier still; self-forgetting, seeking only, emptier cups of love to fill” - Frances Ridley Havergal
- Pastor David Goudy