By: Steve Wilmot
Christmas is a time for love and happiness and family. But often it isn’t. In fact, it can increase the pain of loneliness people feel all year long. Widows living without their spouse for the first holiday season.
Families that, because they are spread out geographically, make it impossible for everyone to get together, leaving some family members to celebrate alone.
The divorced parent who got the kids for Thanksgiving and now sits in an empty house on Christmas.
Charlie Brown succumbed to lonely feelings at Christmas. “I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess. I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards, and decorating trees and all that, but I’m still not happy. I always end up feeling depressed.”
His good friend Linus concluded, “Charlie Brown, you’re the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem.”
A few years ago, a survey was taken which revealed those most affected by loneliness are college students, divorced people, single moms, housewives, and the elderly.
A Kansas newspaper ran an ad several years ago that illustrates how lonely people can be. “I will listen to you talk for 30 minutes without comment for $5.00.”
It wasn’t long before this advertiser was receiving between 10 to 20 calls every day. The pain of loneliness cuts so deep some people are willing to pay for a half hour of companionship.
David often struggled with feelings of loneliness. When his son Absalom undermined him and took the throne, David fled Jerusalem.
Nearly everyone he knew deserted him, either because they switched loyalties to gain a seat of power in the new administration or because they were afraid for their lives if they stayed on David’s side.
In the pit of loneliness David did what he always did. He called out to God. “Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted” (Psalm 25.16).
And God did what he always does. He showed up and proved he is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. God promised us: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13.5). Others may; God won’t.
David testified to the truthfulness of this promise when he wrote in Psalm 37.25: “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.”
We humans have a way of trying to avoid anything that is unpleasant. To try to dodge the pain of loneliness, we fill our desolate hours with television, video games, books, and music. We indulge in social media and pornography to feel like there is someone out there who cares about us.
But could it be that loneliness has a silver lining? That it is one way God uses to get our attention and invite us to draw closer to him? That loneliness can drive us into the arms of the Only One who will never leave us, forsake us, or take advantage of us?
I think the Sidewalk Prophets were on to something when they wrote this verse in their song “Keep Making Me.”
Make me lonely
So I can be Yours
‘Til I want no one
More than You, Lord
‘Cause in the darkness
I know You will hold me
Make me lonely
‘Til You are my one desire
‘Til You are my one true love
‘Til You are my breath, my everything
Lord, please keep making me
“Make” me lonely? Who asks something crazy like that? Only those who realize God is the only one who can meet the deepest longings of his heart.
The guy who welcomes loneliness because it drives him deeper into the arms of Jesus. The gal who understands no one else can meet her search for true love like Jesus can.
God knows that sometimes the only way to get some of us to look his direction is to take away those relationships we’ve made a substitute for him.
To make us lonely. Not to punish us, but to position us so we want no one and nothing more than we want him. Leverage loneliness to make God your Number One, and you’ll never be alone again.
———————–
Steve Wilmot is a former Edgerton, Ohio area pastor who now seeks “to still bear fruit in old age” through writing. He is the author of seven books designed to assist believers to make steady progress on their spiritual journey.