Talking Points with Pastor Lucas: You Are Not Alone
“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’”
The elephant in the room is that there are men and women who are alone. By circumstances of life, by choice, by divorce, or by death, there are people who are alone. There are also people who are surrounded by others yet still feel utterly alone. Either way, there is much hurt and sorrow in that aloneness.
Loneliness has its own distinct bitterness to it—this COVID-19 pandemic and the corresponding lockdowns have brought that out abundantly. Extrovert or introvert, loneliness strikes a piercing and isolating blow to your being. And Satan desires to isolate and torment you in your loneliness.
more Christian friendships.
To be sure, this verse of Genesis certainly confesses God’s creation of marriage, but it also acknowledges God’s creation of companionship. Likewise, the Church of God is to be a place that cultivates bonds of friendship, not just marriages.
True friendship is losing its luster in our digitally distracted and wirelessly plugged-in society. We are losing the art and the patience of just sitting and listening to a friend. We’re trading face-to-face conversations and in-the-flesh interaction for a digital world where we can be surrounded by people and yet be more alone than ever.
However, as the Church of God, men and women alike can again lead the way for what it means to have the great bonds of friendship and fellowship, to be confident and comfortable in showing God-pleasing male and female affection. This is especially needed as we battle the social effects of a pandemic.
The Church needs to be a bastion of Christian friendship. It’s to be a place where we can bear one another’s burdens in the name of Christ. It’s where we need to come alongside one another in the midst of loneliness, especially those who are single for whatever the reason, and help chase away the coldness and darkness of being alone.
The liturgical post-Communion prayer of “fervent love toward one another” needs to be embodied—literally—within the Church so that we do not leave our fellow man and woman living in the loveless shards of technology.
alone. together.
Our expressive individualism has destroyed the faith of the Church being together. And now we find ourselves alone together.
“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone.’”
Why is it not good? Because loneliness can eat you alive. Aloneness can swallow every last ounce of hope that you have to spare. It feasts upon any happiness that you have left, leaving behind an empty carcass, full of despair and memories that you can’t seem to hold onto anymore. Loneliness takes your heart into its claws and seems to squeeze out of you every last bit of life that you have circulating through your veins. It leaves you desperate for relief!
Loneliness desires for you to suffer a life without any warm hands embracing you, or any shoulders for you to cry upon. This beast wants you to long for and feel those cold fingertips merely tracing your soul, seemingly getting closer, only to leave and abandon you once more. Loneliness is suffocating, stifling, and miserable.
But from the very beginning, this is not how we were meant to be. God created us to be in fellowship from the beginning—as He says clearly in Genesis 2:18. And that fellowship and union points to the union we have with our Lord Jesus Christ. After all, He was sent into this world to root out every lonely corner and seek out every isolated soul.
Christ knows your aloneness.
In Christ, you have an ever-present Lord who not only understands your hurt, but has endured the very soul-searching, gut-wrenching, and heart-breaking devastation of lonely suffering. He knows the pains you bear, the emptiness you feel, and the longing you have. He’s suffered it with you.
On the cross of Calvary, our Lord Jesus Christ endured the utter agony of rejection. He dripped with the blood of aloneness, casting His soul into the deepest, darkest depths of loneliness imaginable. He has gone into the depths of loneliness, stood upon the brink of despair, and lay dead sealed in a tomb, so that you would have a Lord who knows what it is like, but who also in the end will bring you out alive and well because He came out alive and well.
Friends, you are not alone!
Jesus loves you and promises to be with you through thick and through thin—when you’re sick and when you sin. Jesus gives you hope on this day. He brings you a good Word of solace; One that’s filled with His forgiveness and resurrection power. By it, He crushes aloneness and thwarts temptation. With it, He baptismally washes you and cleanses you. Putting His name upon you, He declares that you will never be alone in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
You are not alone.
Your brothers and sisters are here and ready to be Christ-in-flesh to you, bearing your burdens and walking alongside you. As we begin a new year, let’s remember that we the Church have a divine calling to walk in fervent love toward one another.
In the joy of Jesus,
Pastor Lucas
Rev. Dr. Lucas V. Woodford
President
Minnesota South District, LCMS
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