LONELINESS

BY REV HENRY HONG

“God makes a home for the lonely.” (Psalm 68:6 NASB)

Pandemic not only put us into our confined spaces. But for some they are left in the lurch of loneliness.

This year’s celebration of Lunar New Year comes with several restrictions to try to keep us and the ‘vulnerable’ seniors safe. There is the specified numbers of household that can be visited as well as the number of people who can gathered in a home’s visit at any one time.

I am also thinking of those in hospital, hospice, nursing home and home-bound. In this season may we take time to pray for and also plan to touch base with those who may be struggling with loneliness.

I was encouraged by the testimony of Elisabeth Elliot on how she coped with ‘Loneliness.’*

Loneliness can be a wilderness. But it can be a pathway to God. When we think of being lonely, we usually mean that there are no people around; no one with us, no one to talk to. Or else we find that the people around us are “not on our wavelength” – they don’t understand us, and that can be worse than no company at all. So loneliness in my experience is not relieved by just anyone’s company. It needs to be someone special – someone who understands me, some who can listen and be there when I need them. It was this last part that forced me to confront the depth of my own loneliness. Of all my friends, no one person could be with me all the time. And even if they could, none of them had the power to do anything about situation. It was ultimately my problem.

Yet there’s the assurance from the Bible that “God makes a home for the lonely” (Ps 68:6 NASB). As a matter of fact, if you look at the rest of the Psalm, it says that God can “do something” about a lot of things. Nothing is too hard for Him. Yet He does not overlook our individual concerns. And He has come down to earth in the Person of Jesus Christ to share in our humanness and loneliness (John 1:14; Mark 15:34). Here’s a Person who not only sympathize with our weakness but invites us to put our trust in Him. He invites us to open our heart to Him so that He can make a home in our life and we don’t have to be lonely (Revelation 3:20). Christ calls me out of my natural self-centredness by listening to my cries and then showing me the bigger picture. The better I come to know Him, the more I become interested in what He is interested in – the more I live for His Kingdom to come, for things to be done on earth as they are in heaven.

QUOTE: “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 acceptance of the situation, but through making it an offering to God, who can transfigure it into something for the good of others.”  (Elizabeth Elliot)

*(Elisabeth Elliot’s life is truly an inspiring and encouraging example on how to cope with loneliness in life’s tragedies and uncertainties having lost her missionary husband Jim who was martyred while reaching out to the unreached Aucas tribe and then her second husband to cancer.)