“Am I Alone?”

The late John McCain, former U.S. senator, was imprisoned as a POW during the Vietnam War. Sen. McCain and many other prisoners were subject to beatings and torture, but the worst punishment was solitary confinement for months on end.

When questioned about his confinement, he said, “As far as this business of solitary confinement goes — the most important thing for survival is communication with someone, even if it’s only a wave or a wink, a tap on the wall, or to have a guy put his thumbs up. It makes all the difference.”

In our everyday world, you and I may never talk to someone who has had to deal with the stress of being a prisoner of war, or an inmate who has been locked in a room with limited outside communication with no end in sight. Everyone knows someone who has had to struggle with being left alone.

Top Issue for Churches

I have been struck recently with how many people in our everyday lives face that same sense of isolation, abandonment, “aloneness” as those confined.

In a Barna study published January 10, 2024 entitled, “What Role Does the Local Church Have in Its City?” respondents stated that for issues such as crime, homelessness and racism, they saw local and national government, community residents and individuals as offering the primary solution, with the church only as a supporting player. However, the top issue that both “churched” and “unchurched” believe Christian churches are well positioned to address is “loneliness.”

We live in a broken world, and we should not be surprised if we get broken, or we break others. Broken people feel abandoned and isolated. They begin to believe that they are alone in their pain. Too often the answers we provide are too simplistic, and too short term.

Not Left Us Alone

The good news is that amid our brokenness, whether its physical, emotional or spiritual God has not left us alone. By his mercy and grace, God places family, people, doctors, caretakers in my life so that I do not need to struggle by myself. He places me in someone else’s life, so they do not struggle alone.

The greatest demonstration of this is the fact that God sent Jesus to live, walk, work and serve in the center of a broken world filled with broken people. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection demonstrates his love for the broken. His title, “Son of man” shows his kinship with our humanity and intentionality to walk among the broken and offer hope by his power and presence and resurrection. Jesus’ presence reminds me that I am not alone.

In John’s gospel, just before Jesus is executed, he speaks words of comfort to his disciples and says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you (John 14:16­–18 ESV).”

Break the Confinement

The belief that I am alone in my broken world is a lie. Believing the lie further isolates and cripples me. The promise of Jesus to not leave us alone is a powerful message and is given to each of us to hear, share and live. The grace of God provides for me a partner to walk through the brokenness, aloneness of life is a wonderful word of hope. It brings hope to me and allows me to speak hope to others.

“The most important thing for survival is communication with someone,” Sen. McCain said. God in his mercy communicated in the clearest way he could, by personally stepping into the brokenness of my world through Jesus, and empowers me, through his Holy Spirit to step into the brokenness, aloneness of others. He shatters the lie that I am alone and in doing so allows hope to enter my life. God by his grace gives me the opportunity to be a channel of his hope to people who are feeling alone who are around me each day. When fail to speak I abandon them to their lonely cell.

The old Beatles song, “Eleanor Rigby,” carries the line, “all the lonely people, where do they all come from.” They come from the people I rub shoulders with each day. People trying to survive in a broken world who find themselves exhausted and hopeless.

For each of us, sometimes hope can be dim, until that first tap of communication, that shattering of the lie that I am alone breaks in. May I not miss the opportunity to break the confinement that the lie that “I am alone” brings and bring that hope to others. May I do so as Jesus did, up close and personal and with the great grace and mercy that God gives to each of us.

Kevin McBride has served as senior pastor of Raymond Baptist Church in Raymond, New Hampshire, since 2005.  Raymond Baptist Church hosts the SonShine Community Table, which offers a free meal and fellowship for over 100 individuals; the Community Food Pantry; Senior Appreciation Breakfasts; a free Wild Game Dinner; and more. His passion is to make the Church indispensable to the life of our communities and world in the name of Jesus Christ. McBride is a graduate of Boston University in aerospace engineering and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.