A Dozen Ways To Defeat Lonliness

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• Psalm 102:7—“I lie awake, and am like a
sparrow alone on the housetop.”
• Psalm 31:11—“I am a reproach among all
my enemies,but especially among my neighbors,
and am repulsive to my acquaintances;
those who see me outside flee from me.”
Both Job and the apostle Paul felt the sting
of loneliness. Job cried out: “All my close friends
abhor me,and those whom I love have turned
against me” (Job 19:19).
Paul wrote: “At my first defense no one stood
with me, but all forsook me” (2 Timothy 4:16).
With His betrayal by friends, arrest by the
Jewish leaders and crucifixion by the Romans,
Jesus felt deeply the pain of loneliness. He literally
screamed His pain aloud: “My God, My God, why
have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46).
Likewise, many contemporaries have experienced
the pang of loneliness. The great composer
Peter Tchaikovsky wrote: “None but the lonely
heart can feel my anguish.” Henry David Thoreau
lamented: “It would give me such joy to know that
a friend had come to see me, and yet that pleasure
I seldom if ever experience.”