On a recent ABC “20/20” program there was a segment about various ways our world might end. The reporters did on-the-street interviews of people and asked them how they would spend their last days if they knew the world was going to end and everyone was going to perish. Some people said that they’d party, others that they would do as many things as they could that they’ve always wanted to do but never got around to doing. However, most people said that they’d spend their last days and hours with their families. The word “family” came up again and again.

We Thrive on Human Connection
People need people. God has created us for two relationships: a relationship with Him and a relationship with other people. Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37-39) That is to say, we should love the people God has put around us. God has designed us to have meaningful, close connections with other people.
The Bible says that after God created Adam, the first man, God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. . . .” (Genesis 2:18) So God created a woman; they took it from there, creating other people we call children — and the rest is history. We’ve been designed to be connected to other people by relationships.

The Epidemic of Loneliness
The problem is that we don’t always have the kind of healthy, close, personal connections with other people that we were designed to have. Because we don’t have what we were designed to have, we experience pain. That pain is called loneliness, and it’s one of the most difficult experiences we can have.
To some extent, we’re all lonely. We all feel that no one understands us, no one cares about us, no one appreciates us.
People are lonely in all kinds of situations. You can be lonely in a crowd, and many people are. If you’re single and feel that you live in a world that emphasizes couples, you may have a twinge of jealousy when you see a couple walking together — but you need to remember that many married couples are lonely. The good-looking, the wealthy, the famous, and the influential can be lonely, even though they have the attention of many people, because they know that people are only attracted to them because of their looks, wealth, fame, or influence. Leaders can be lonely; pastors can be lonely. Anyone can be lonely, and almost all of us eventually are.
Maybe that’s why Hans Christian Anderson’s story of the Ugly Duckling continues to be popular. Remember the story? A swan’s egg gets mixed in with a mother duck’s eggs. When the eggs hatch, there’s one great big baby that looks like an ugly duckling. Even the odd “duckling” comes to see himself as ugly. He doesn’t fit in, and he’s lonely. Of course the story ends well when he realizes that he’s a swan, not a duck; he joins the other swans and is no longer lonely. We all wish the stories of our lives would turn out so happily!
Mother Teresa said that loneliness is the leprosy of modern society. I checked the internet and found many sites that deal with loneliness, including www.webofloneliness.com. Loneliness is a familiar part of life.

The Apostle Paul: a People Person
The apostle Paul was inspired by God to write a good part of our New Testament in the Bible. Everything he wrote in our Bibles is in the form of letters to groups of people (churches in certain areas) or to individuals. Because they’re letters, they contain a lot of personal references, as you would expect letters to contain. Paul, though only an imperfect human like you and me, was used by God in mighty ways — and his great love for people and deep, close connection to them is to be admired and copied.
Take, for instance, the first letter of his that we have. He wrote it to the Christians in the Greek city of Thessalonica (hence we call it First Thessalonians). In one brief section there are all kinds of phrases that indicate his love for the Thessalonians. He wrote that he was “. . . torn away from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you.” (1 Thessalonians 2:17) He went on, “For we wanted to come to you — certainly I, Paul, did, again and again — but Satan stopped us.” (1 Thessalonians 2:18) Note that Paul said that Satan put up roadblocks to his being able to come to them. Satan is still a key factor in causing loneliness in this world, alienating people from each other.
Then note how Paul talks about the Thessalonians in his letter to them: “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy.” (1 Thessalonians 2:19)
Paul wasn’t going to be able to go to see them in person, but he found a solution. (It was second best, but at least it was a solution.) “So when we could stand it no longer, we thought it best to be left by ourselves in Athens. We sent Timothy, who is our brother and God’s fellow worker, to strengthen and encourage you in your faith, so that no one would be unsettled by these trials.” (1 Thessalonians 3:1-3)
Paul sent Timothy, and he came back with a report on how things were going for the Thessalonians. “But Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought good news about your faith and love. He has told us that you long to see us, just as we also long to see you.” (1 Thessalonians 3:6) Then Paul wrote, “Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.” (1 Thessalonians 3:10)
You can plainly see that Paul put a high priority on healthy, close connections with people. I suspect that even when he was writing one of his letters in a prison cell (several were written while he was under arrest for preaching about Jesus) he wasn’t really lonely, though he might have been alone.

Relationships Need Regular Maintenance
Paul was quite a letter writer. (I’ll bet he would have been elated if he had had e-mail and a wifi connection in prison!) Paul traveled a lot, so the only way he could maintain relationships with some people was through letters. The fact that we have so many of Paul’s letters in our Bibles indicates that he knew — and certainly models for us — the importance of maintaining relationships.
Isn’t it amazing how once-healthy relationships can deteriorate? Last Sunday I stopped in at Kroger on Laskey Road after church to get a Starbucks coffee. I followed an older couple into the store. The man was walking behind his wife, having grabbed a cart outside. He asked her, “Do you want the cart?” She turned her head and snapped back, “Of course!” It’s hard to imagine, but at one time this couple was probably young and deeply in love.
Many things take regular maintenance; why do we so often forget that relationships do, too? I always tell young couples for whom I perform a wedding that they may have fallen in love, but they’ll have to work to stay in love and have their love deepen and grow.
I believe that men often overlook this need for maintenance in relationships, especially in marriage. Most men are quite maintenance-conscious when it comes to our cars. It annoys us to no end when there’s a little ticking sound and we don’t know what’s causing it. When we go on a trip we want the car running smoothly, at the top of its performance. The same goes with computers: most of us men will sit hunched over a computer for hours trying to solve a problem. Why not show the same kind of tenacity at solving problems in a marriage so that it works better?
All couples need to do maintenance on their marriages, Diann and I included. Recently we were traveling home from a week’s vacation and had to have a heart-to-heart talk that put my stomach in knots and Diann in tears. We had to work through some “issues,” as they say nowadays. I think that we have a great marriage (not perfect, because no marriage is perfect) because we do regular maintenance on it like that.
You may not be married, but other relationships need regular maintenance, too. The fact is that unless we work on the connections with the people God has put around us, we’re going to grow apart — even alienated — from each other because of hurt feelings or hard feelings. No one drifts into better relationships; we have to work ourselves into them.

Take the First Steps
How do we deal with the loneliness in our lives? Certainly not by sitting around bemoaning the fact that no one cares about us or that no one understands us. No one else is going to solve the problem of loneliness for us. We may feel that another person should do something, but what’s the chance of that? God is calling US to do something! We’re called to do our part.
Jesus said, “If your brother sins against you, . . .” Should we wait for him to see the error of his ways and apologize to us? That’s not what Jesus said. “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. . . .” (Matthew 18:15) Just because we don’t think that it’s our fault that things aren’t right (and it is our own fault more often than we want to admit), that doesn’t give us the excuse to do nothing about the situation.
It has been said that “to have a friend, you must be one.” It starts there. Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t go to somebody’s funeral, they won’t go to yours.” OK, that doesn’t quite make sense, but you know what he was trying to say.
I believe that God will challenge each of us this week to do the hard thing: to approach someone to make amends, to be the one to take the first step toward reconciliation. I believe that God is calling us to get beyond looking out for our own interests, and instead really reaching out and caring about someone else. “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:4)
If you neglect maintenance on a car, a lawn, or a house, you pay for it eventually when things wind down, deteriorate, or wear out. Human connections are no different; they need regular maintenance. (I’ll be more specific about this in the five weeks to come, talking about how we can do that and exactly what it might involve.) This week we need to commit ourselves to being open to the Lord’s leading — and taking those first steps away loneliness!