loneliness on Racial Reconciliation

Lord Jesus—the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and the author of change, who’s constantly doing “a new thing,” which makes us sit up and take notice. We admit, we’d be more comfortable with a pred...

God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Lord of all our yesterdays, todays and tomorrows: thank you that we don’t need to be afraid of what’s coming because you’re already there ahead of us. Nothing takes yo...

The Leader and People pray responsively In peace, we pray to you, Lord God. Silence For all people in their daily life and work; For our families, friends, and neighbors, and for those who are...

Jesus–our Lord, Savior and Friend: Come into our hearts to save us and to rule. Come into your Church to direct and empower us with Your Gospel and Your Spirit. Come into your World to redeem the Lost...

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 ...

The soul selects her own society, Then shuts the door; On her divine majority, Obtrude no more.

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

The etymology of certain words can profoundly enrich our understanding and experience of life. Consider the word “consolation.” Its roots lie in the Latin words “con-” meaning “ “to be ” and “solus,...

When we moved up here to this neck of the woods and settled in on our farm, there was an old farmer who lived to the west of us and his older brother who lived to the east, and this is what we were to...

Loneliness is a wilderness, but through receiving it as a gift, accepting it from the hand of God, and offering it back to him with thanksgiving, it may become a pathway to holiness, to glory and to G...

Loneliness comes over us sometimes as a sudden tide. It is one of the terms of our humanness, and, in a sense, therefore, incurable. Yet I have found peace in my loneliest times not only through accep...

God—Father, Son and Spirit; You are a God of compassion and love. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we’ve known Your love, and experienced Your care and provision. Repeatedly You’ve answered our ...

The Psalmist draws us into prayer saying: Come and hear, all you who honor God and let me tell you what he has done for me. I cried out to him and God has surely listened and heard my prayer. Praise ...

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...

The greatest dis-ease facing humanity right now is our profound and painful sense of disconnection.

Since God intends to make you like Jesus, he will take you through the same experiences Jesus went through. That includes loneliness, temptation, stress, criticism, rejection, and many other problems.

Context to Chapter 19 If you are following the semi-continuous lectionary you may have read the context for this passage in church last week. However, if you are following one of the more traditional...

Good and Gracious God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: we come to You as an impatient people filled with a multitude of desires and needs. We yearn for simple things--the arrival of warm weather, enough...

There’s been a lot of talk about friendship because of Facebook and the internet. You can collect friends and “likes” and begin to feel pretty good about yourself, depending on how many you accumulate...

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...

Context to Chapter 19 Before this passage in 1 Kings, Elijah has just challenged (and massacred) the prophets of Baal. He has fled into the wilderness to escape the wrath of Queen Jezebel and is now ...

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”

The best of community does give one a deep sense of belonging and well-being; and in that sense community takes away loneliness.

In his book The DNA of Relationships counselor Gary Smalley argues from countless hours of research and observation alongside the wisdom of the Bible that we are hardwired for relationship. This i...

Harvard Professor Robert Putnam once lamented that Americans were “bowling alone;” increasingly, we’re also eating alone, as nobody is home for dinner.

Leader: God of love, when we wander away it is your grace that calls us back to you. All: You receive us with mercy, and we give thanks. Loving Christ, when we are lost and lonely in a far l...

Solitude is an opportunity to interrupt this cycle by turning off the noise and stimulation of our lives so that we can hear our loneliness and our longing calling us deeper into the only relationship...

In this excerpt from Jay Y. Kim’s book, Analog Church , the author shares about an experience at a local restaurant after being convicted of his own smartphone use at home, keeping him from being p...

[Alienation is] “the state of mind that can find a social order remote, incomprehensible, or fraudulent.

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.