The Lonely Hearts Club

One of my dad's commonly reminisced memories from college is about the time when he and three of his best friends were all single. On Friday nights, when other people were out on dates, they got together to form a "Lonely Hearts Club," a bit of a play on words to describe not only their relational state of being, but also their activity and occasion for gathering: playing the card game, Hearts. I don't know why he always tells this story, which is really not much of a story, but a random factoid that he throws out whenever it seems to fit the conversation. If it were me, I would keep that info tucked away, an embarrassing moment in history that belongs in a textbook footnote. Alas, not my dad.

Trolling through sermons today, I came across a REALLY bad sermon illustration, a joke (Anecdote? Unclassifiable bit of speech?) about some poor schmuck getting rejected from his local Lonely Hearts Club with the line, "We're not that lonely." Reminded me of my dad...in both the mentioning of a Lonely Hearts Club and in it's being the kind of lame joke that I often give him a hard time for telling.

So when I say trolling, what I mean is that I did a sermon search on Crosswalk.com to see what any of the big whigs that get their sermons posted up there had to say about loneliness. The topic has been on my mind lately, and not really in the emo, I-want-a-boy kind of way, but just in the sense that I live my life without the presence of a day-to-day family to come home to. My dad keeps nudging me back towards songwriting, and one of the biggest themes that keeps coming up in my writing is how much it can suck to live in a city--where it's hard to consistently keep in touch with people.

Unfortunately, the sermon search is a total tease--they only give you the first 300ish characters, then you have to buy the manuscript. Lame. Despite only getting the intro to a whole bunch of sermons (including plenty of random statistics and several more bad jokes stolen and recycled by pastors I've never heard of), I came out with some interesting stuff.

First was a bit of encouragement quoted from Rudyard Kipling, who said, "The human soul is essentially a very lonely thing. We are born alone, die alone, and in the depths of our heart we live alone." Thanks, Rudy. How uplifting. I get a mental image of the old-school Brit with an emo comb-over. Moving on...

Anytime I start to feel alone, I try to remember that no matter what, God is with me. I like that. It's comforting to know that He loves me so personally that He will never leave me or forsake me. On those days, what I really want to do is curl away somewhere, Bible and journal in hand, and avoid the rest of the world for the rest of my time here. It reminds me that heaven will be so great because the only thing I'll do is be in constant fellowship with God. Me and Him. Connected. It makes me want to get there soon.

The next stop for my train of thought is on the truth in Scripture that God has purposed my life. If I were not called to live here among others for some reason or another, He would take me home already.

Hmm...how to be in the world, but not of it?

Especially since I distrust the credibility of these sermons, I didn't take much from what the pastors cut and pasted together, but I did pick up on some common scripture references and figured that if it's in the Bible, you can't really go wrong.

Usually they start in Genesis: the first case of loneliness happens early in the Bible, when God says, "it is not good for the man to be alone" (2:18). God's design was that we would be made in His image--in the image of the Trinity, that famous three-in-one conundrum. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit enjoy perfect community at all times. So, I think, if I'm supposed to be made in the image of God, why is my community a 30 minute drive down the 10 Freeway? Survey says, the Fall. Who knew some hungry chick could cause us all these problems? God intended for Adam and Eve to experience the kind of relational joy that would reflect the nature of their Creator, but along the way, humankind got a little (understatement) out of whack.

Other points of interest I found woven into sermons were references to King David and King Solomon, both of which expressed the anguish of being alone and the great problem of it: "...but woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up!" (see Ecc. 4:9-12). Fast forward a few years and we find Paul struggling with the same kinds of things. He ends up in prison, and people really start to bail on him. I thought I had it bad.

It didn't take too long, though, for me to get bored with my sermon search. I would have gladly traded in all of those openers for the last 300 characters of each sermon. Assuming each one fit the 3-point sermon system (and they all seemed to, from what I saw), the last few words would be a sign off and application point. Ok, so we see loneliness in the Bible. We understand that it's not the best case scenario...but what do we do with it? How would these pastors attempt to solve the problem? A few verses of encouragement: God is always by our side...? Or maybe a charge to get involved in each others lives.

I pull out my journal and write out a few more phrases that I might try to eventually formulate into a song. It's all rough and thematic at this point, but I keep going back to the same line.

What if I called you and asked to come and sit with you a while?
We don't have to talk, I just want to feel your nearness warming my skin.