loneliness on Suffering

Many of us assume that our spiritual heroes do not have to experience the same inner-wrestling that we do. Mother Teresa, beloved across the world is one such figure we might “assume” didn’t have to d...

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 ...

I’ve known a lot of people who have lived painful, tragic lives. When I was young, I assumed these people were abnormal. Their suffering was the exception that proved the rule that a well-lived life i...

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,...

O God, early in the morning I cry to you. Help me to pray And to concentrate my thoughts on you: I cannot do this alone. In me there is darkness. But with you there is light; I am lonely, but you do n...

Reflection The television series Alone follows ten individuals who are left to fend for themselves and by themselves in the wilderness. Now, these aren’t everyday individuals plucked from Main St...

Pain is the most individualizing thing on earth. It is true that it is the great common bond as well, but that realization comes only when it is over. To suffer is to be alone. To watch another suffer...

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...

In any trial, in any bitter situation, you are not alone, you are not helpless, you are not a victim. You have a tree, a cross, shown to you by the Sovereign God of Calvary. Whatever the trial or temp...

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...

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.

In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable, we learn that ultimately in this world there is no finished symphony.

Was ever grief like mine?

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...

Addiction goes deeper than obsession and compulsion. It is worship. It is giving my heart and soul over to something that I believe will ease my pain and provide an outlet for my fury at being out of ...

No person has ever walked our earth and been free from the pains of loneliness. Rich and poor, wise and ignorant, faith-filled and agnostic, healthy and unhealthy have all alike had to face and strugg...

The wilderness is that season of our lives where God, through our loneliness, teaches us that his will is to do something in us, not merely do something for us. That is, by walking by faith and not by...

Jesus has journeyed to the far reaches of loneliness.

Some Christians try to go to heaven alone, in solitude. But believers are not compared to bears or lions or other animals that wander alone. Those who belong to Christ are sheep in this respect, that ...

God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry chafe our shoulders and weigh us down; when the road seems dreary and endless, the skies grey and threatening; when our lives have no music in...

Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you, As few human or even divine ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight Has made my eyes sof...

Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.

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...

13-year-old Mary is having a tough day and has stretched herself out on the couch to do a bit of what she thought to be well-deserved complaining and self-pitying. She moans to her Mom and brother, “N...

The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.

If you feel a great loneliness and a deep longing for human contact, you have to be extremely discerning…and ask yourself whether this situation is truly God given. Because where God wants you to be, ...

Should his heart break and the grief pour out, it would flow over the whole earth, it seems, and yet, no one sees it.

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...

The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.

Practically every human being . . . has experienced that strange inner gnawing, that mental hunger, that unsettling unrest that makes us say, ‘I feel lonely.’ Loneliness is one of the most universal e...