Isolation

Leader: How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? People: How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? Leader:...

Our current cultural moment makes rich, life-giving friendships like the one David and Jonathan shared a challenge. We are connected like never before, yet isolated and lonely like never before. MIT p...

Any social science study will tell you relationships are key to happiness and well-being. But there’s more. Friendship isn’t just an elective in the course of life, it’s required. In my line of work I...

If you are looking for a story that illustrates humanity's deep-seeded need for relationships, you could do far worse than the 2000 film, Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks. The protagonist, Chuck No...

Leader: Heavenly Father, You do not want anyone to suffer in darkness or separation, but rather for everyone to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. As members of your family, may we remembe...

These days, a common trick people use to remember someone they’ve just met is to save their first name along with the place where they met them—like “Matt PTA,” for example. I recently realized I stil...

God of the Ages, Every day we come face to face with our mortality and the pain of this broken world Every day the need is great in body, mind, and spirit Every day brings disappointment  Every day b...

Gracious God, We build walls to protect ourselves, but it leads to isolation. We make independence the highest value, instead of complete dependence on You. Forgive us for our inability to surrender e...

Lord of families, tribes, peoples, nations and all the world: it’s for freedom You’ve set us free from sin, guilt, and judgment; free to do what is right and just, what is compassionate, gracious and ...

Lord—You are coming in power someday—and You are already here, near at-hand. You know us entirely—you know our wants and needs, our dreams and hopes, our disappointments and griefs--and yet You are no...

“Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms”

The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.

The world says: "You have needs — satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This ...

What is “Good” about Friday? For the work-a-day world in the United States of America, Fridays are good. TGIF, “Thank God It’s Friday!” is an interjection we use to convey relief that the work week i...

Preaching Commentary What is “Good” about Friday? For the work-a-day world in the United States of America, Fridays are good. TGIF, “Thank God It’s Friday!” is an interjection we use to convey reli...

“Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scatt...

Researchers have found that more than half a million people in Japan stay at home for at least six months at a time without having any contact with the outside world.

The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die.

No matter how low down you are; no matter what your disposition has been; you may be low in your thoughts, words, and actions; you may be selfish; your heart may be overflowing with corruption and wic...

Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twi...

In the movie Now, Voyager , actor, Paul Henried, in solemn, even ominous tones, proclaims that “some people are alone in all ways, and all people are alone in some ways.”

Before 1348 leprosy is the most terrifying illness which people can imagine. Leprosy is known to us as Hansen’s disease but in the fourteenth century it can include all manner of skin ailments, includ...

Researchers have found that when prisoners are placed in solitary confinement with little human contact and minimal sensory stimulation, severe psychological and physical issues often ensue: depressio...

Researchers have found that more than half a million people in Japan stay at home for at least six months at a time without having any contact with the outside world.

As the speed and choices of the digital age send us hurling toward impatience and shallowness, they culminate in its most damaging consequence: isolation. Social media, in particular, lures us in unde...

It turns out that the people who reported spending the most time on social media—more than two hours a day—had twice the odds of perceived social isolation than those who said they spent a half hour p...

No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. If no o...

If anything, there appears to be an inverse relationship between our growing obsession with the home as a totem object and the disintegration of families that has become the chief social phenomenon of...

We may be “connected,” but we’re lonely, we’re isolated from each other, and we’ve become afraid of each other. That fear has produced acts of violence that are becoming all too common.

An estimated half of people aged 75 and over live alone—about two million people across England—with many saying they can go days, even weeks, with no social interaction at all.