Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

This is the second message in our Games People Play Series and today we’re discovering the game of Solitaire.

This is a simple card game played by one person. You take a deck of cards, line them up in 8 rows each with one more card facedown than the previous row. Then, (depending on who’s rules you play by), you flip over one card at a time until you can make 4 ascending rows of card arranged according to suit, hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs. This is not a terribly difficult game to play, but it can be very, very frustrating if you want to win. A lot of factors go into the outcome of the game, such as: the shuffle, the deal, and whether you flip one or three cards at a time. But there is one constant in Solitaire, and that’s the fact that it is only played by one person, by yourself, solo. Hence the name solitaire, meaning alone.

I went to summer camp one year when I was in Boy Scouts. Scout camp is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be a learning experience that is enjoyable and exciting, adventurous, and awesome. It turned out to be a nightmare for me. It wasn’t the fact that it was exciting, or the fact that there were other people there, it was the fact that I was separated from my family for the first time. I was completely and utterly alone. Alienated from my family who was some 100 miles away, I felt abandoned and deserted. I began to panic. I developed pseudo-symptoms of diseases that I didn’t really have. I spent almost two full days in the nurses’ cabin before they finally broke down and allowed me to telephone my parents. My mother wanted to come and immediately fetch me. Then my Father got on the telephone and lovingly told me that they were not coming to get me. I would have to spend the rest of the week alone. I was devastated. I felt betrayed and deserted. We’ll get back to what happened to me in a few minutes, but I want you to focus on the fact that I felt alone.

How many of you have experienced loneliness? How many of you experience feelings of isolation from others on a daily basis? There were many people in the Bible who experienced these very same feelings. We’ll take a look at these today. But before we do that, let’s go to the Lord in prayer.

According to a recent Census Bureau figures over 23.6 million people in the U.S. live alone, and 38% of them are elderly.  A few years ago a survey regarding loneliness was placed in a Sunday magazine. 25,000 people responded.  15% were lonely almost all the time.  Only 6% said they were never lonely 78% admitted they felt lonely at least some time.

MAIN POINT ONE: YOU ARE NOT ALONE

According to many therapists, loneliness is an epidemic that includes all of us.  When Mother Teresa was alive she did an interview for Leadership Magazine, and said this: “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or cancer. It's the feeling of being uncared for, unwanted-of being deserted and alone.”

Craig Ellison has written a book entitled Loneliness – The Search for Intimacy.  In it he makes this statement:  “Loneliness has been one of Americas best kept secrets.  Everybody has felt it, but nobody talks about it.  It’s been a taboo topic.  Never the less, the word is out – people are lonely, even normal people.” That includes you and me.  I know there are times in my life that I am lonely.  In honesty all of us need to admit to loneliness.

The Bible also confirms that loneliness is very real.  Numerous persons in Scripture admit to loneliness.  There is Elijah the prophet.  After he had defeated the prophets of Baal he fled to Mt Horeb and hid in a cave. “Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 He answered, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” (1Kings 19:9,10)

Reading in the Psalms we can note an assortment of expressions of loneliness. In Psalm 25:16    the Psalmist cries out to God, 16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.” Psalm 102:7 “I lie awake; I am like a lonely bird on the housetop.” Psalm 142:4 “Look on my right hand and see— there is no one who takes notice of me; no refuge remains to me; no one cares for me.”

Then there is Psalm 22:1, which was quoted by Jesus as he hung on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

These words of Jesus and the Psalmist focus the worst feature of loneliness, the thought of being abandoned by God.  It is most painful.  Everyone had abandoned Jesus.  All those disciples who had pledged so much, Peter who said that even if every one left him, he would not – all these had left him.  Suffering from bodily pain he also experienced the more excruciating pain of being forsaken by God.

Eric Harris kept a diary. The journal entries flesh out the picture of Harris as a teen who felt excluded by other kids and frustrated with women. "I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things," he wrote. "You people had my phone #, and I asked and all, but no no no no no don’t let the weird looking Eric kid come along." Eric decided that he would make others feel just as lonely as he did, and so Harris along with Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School on April 20, 1999 and murdered twelve people before taking their own lives.

There is no pain like loneliness.  It is physical pain.  It causes many to simply destroy their lives.  It is the reason people become addicted to drugs and alcohol.  It has caused others to feel like Elijah who wanted to die.

Some of the most powerful people in the world are among the world’s loneliest. They are in the middle of many people but feel all alone, and that has caused them to go to all the wrong places and people to find intimacy.  The tremendous emphasis on pornography in our society, especially on the Internet has grown because of the immense pain of loneliness.

Jesus promised us something different. He gave us something to cling to in our most intense struggles with solitary feelings. That assurance finds focus in our next point:

MAIN POINT TWO: GOD NEVER ABANDONS

This lesson is part of the final statement Jesus made to his disciples as described by John.  Jesus is anticipating what his disciples are going to experience.  He knows that his absence from their lives is going to create significant problems, problems created by loneliness because he will no longer be with them.  He wants to prepare them for his leaving.  He wants to assure them that they will not be alone and so he says to them in verse 18, “I will not leave you orphaned.”

The word, “orphaned” is used only once like this in the NT, but was used often in Greek literature to reveal how students would feel when abandoned by their teachers.   There are instances in which this word depicts the feelings of students left behind by Socrates. The meaning is that Jesus doesn’t want his disciples to feel that they are now unprotected or abandoned.  Even though he will be absent from them in the flesh he assures them that he is going to be present with them in a whole new and wonderful way. He says that he is coming to them, and that in a little while the world will not longer see him, but they will see him, and they will live because he will live.

In these words of Jesus, as seen in the whole context of this chapter is some of the wisest counsel we can find on dealing with our loneliness.   Jesus gives his disciples and us a vision on how to deal with feeling all-alone at any time in any age.  Looking at the first words of this chapter in which Jesus tells them that He is going to prepare a place for them that they may be where He is, He points toward the day where none will be lonely again. What a glorious day that will be.

Paul wrote his second letter to the Corinthians and in the fourth chapter he describes the life of every believer, but he offers us a truth in verse 9 that everyone can cling to: 8We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” Paul shows us that we are not alone, every Christian has to endure this type of persecution, and even though we go through intense discrimination, we can cling to the fact that God does not abandon us.

MAIN POINT THREE: WE NEED ASSOCIATION

Suzanne Gordon has suggested, in her study of lonely people in America, that a central reason for so much loneliness is our heritage of competitive self-fulfillment. We are encouraged to express ourselves, to fulfill our goals, to be single-minded in the quest for success, none of which, she argues, promises the development of warm, considerate people. Only warm, considerate human beings can create communities that will uplift people and carry them through all of life’s struggles.

In America there may simply not be enough of such people.

Loneliness is one of the consequences of our intense individualism.

Television and computers have made the situation worse because both draw out attention away from people to a mechanical device.

Over the last half-century, television has become the single most important cultural force in our country. Television advertisers shape our politics, our entertainment, and increasingly our education. While television can unify us—think, for example, of 9-11, - it also distorts our perception of reality. As Robert Pirsig has noted,

“The media have convinced people that what’s around them is unimportant. And that’s why they’re lonely. You see it in their faces... first the little flicker of searching, and then when they look at you... you don’t count. You’re not what they’re looking for. You’re not on TV.”

It’s not real if it’s not on television is a truism for too many people. Such a belief only increases loneliness.

Computers may replace television in the scope of their influence. Computers may through e-mail and chat rooms and web pages help people make connections. But computers still take us away from our own families into the isolation of a machine world, what is often a fantasy world, and what for a good number of people becomes a substitute for the real world. To the extent that computers enable us, even seduce us to escape our lives, escape the people around us, escape the work that we are responsible for, to that extent computers heighten our individualism and threaten the communal ties that bind us to one another. Down that road lies loneliness.

We need association. we need community.

Paul in Romans 14:7 says: “For none of us lives to himself alone, and none of us dies to himself alone.” We have to overcome this struggle before it becomes a plague.

To overcome the loneliness that the absence of communal feelings causes in us will not be easy. Values and traditions are not ready-made items just waiting to be embraced. They grow with time and events and reflection. But we can move towards the creation and strengthening of community by doing several things.

First we can become better acquainted with the Off button on our television sets and our computers.

Secondly, we can not only take part in the activities of a community group—like this congregation—but we can become committed to and responsible for those activities and that group, as our board of trustees and other leaders do for us. We can be sure that every one in this congregation knows that you do not need to rejoice or to struggle alone. This community is ready to share for better and for worse with all those who choose to be part of it.

Thirdly, we can widen our horizons so that we learn to think in terms not of Buckeyes or Americans but of human culture and human values. If we do not develop adequate communal values on a planetary basis, loneliness could become a problem of epic proportions.

To cope with the loneliness that comes from not feeling part of a larger whole, we must establish communities, values, traditions that matter deeply to us, that we will work for and enjoy living with, and that will sustain our need of sharing in a human enterprise larger than our own individual lives.

We must understand that our individual goals really only make sense in the context of community, in the context of the church. That realization will help us to find a path out of loneliness.

My camp experience with loneliness had a happy ending. After I got off the phone with my parents, I realized that I would have to find the answer for loneliness somewhere, so I decided to be a part of the community. I learned more that week than I thought possible and made many new friends who helped me to understand the value of community. When I returned from camp and my parents were there to pick me up, I thanked them for leaving me alone so that I could make new friends.

Jesus fully understood loneliness. When He went to the garden to pray, he took his disciples with him. He went by himself to pray but he asked them to wait for him. While he agonized in prayer over the decision to give his life for all of us, his disciples fell asleep. He came back and found them that way, and asked them, you could not keep watch with me for one hour? (Matthew 26:40)

Again, he went back and agonized in prayer. He returned a second time and found them asleep again. So he left them there and continued to pray. Upon returning the third time, he asked them, “Are you still sleeping and resting?” The next thing that happened was for one of Jesus’ own disciples to betray him. Turning him over to the high priests’ servants, he left Jesus completely alone by betraying him. Matthew then records in verse 56, “then all the disciples deserted him and fled.”  He knew loneliness. But do you know what else he knew? He knew that God would never abandon him and that by establishing the church, we would understand community and never be lonely again. He said in John 8:29, “The One who sent me is with me, He has not left me alone.

Maybe you feel alone this morning. We live in a world of Solitaire where we have to feel like we should play by ourselves because no one else cares. No one else will be there for us. But when we understand that God is always there and never abandons us, and has set up his church as a community for us to participate in, how could you ask for anything else?

Maybe this morning you’re searching for community. Maybe you have that connection, that relationship with God, but you are searching deeper for something. His church is the community you seek. This church would be more than happy to welcome you into our community.

If you feel alone this morning, maybe it’s not because you don’t have community, maybe it’s because you don’t have God. God is calling you to a life of intimacy with Him. He wants you to be so caught up in Him that you are focused on nothing else. He desires to do the same with you. Imagine never feeling lonely again. That is a life with Christ. If you’ve never accepted Him as your Lord and Savior, we invite you to do that today as we stand and we sing.

Brian Morrissey