Peace with God, Chapter 6: The Despair of Loneliness
By Billy Graham
I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind. I am like a broken vessel. --Psalm 31:12
AFTER the death of her husband, Queen Victoria said, "There is no one left to call me Victoria." Even though she was a queen, she knew what it meant to be lonely.
H.G. Wells said on his sixty-fifth birthday, "I am sixty-five, and I am lonely and have never found peace."
Isadora Duncan, the great ballet dancer who danced before the royalty of Europe and was considered one of the greatest ballet dancers of all time, said, "I have never been alone but that my heart did ache, my eyes fill with tears, and my hands tremble for a peace and a joy that I never found." She went on to say that in the midst of millions of admirers, she was actually a very lonely woman.
A few years ago, a beautiful young Hollywood star with apparently everything a girl could want, ended her life. In the brief note that she left was an incredibly simple explanation -- she was unbearably lonely.
The psalmist said, "I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top" (Psalm 102:6).
Again the psalmist said, "Reproach has broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none" (Psalm 69:20).
The Loneliness of Solitude
First, there is the Loneliness of Solitude. I have felt the loneliness of the ocean where there is never a sound except the booming of the surf along rock-strewn shores. I have felt the loneliness of the prairie with only the occasional mournful howl of the coyote. I have felt the loneliness of the mountains broken only by the sighing of the wind.
The sentry standing duty alone at an outpost, the thousands in mental institutions, and those in solitary confinement in prisons and concentration camps know the meaning of the loneliness of solitude.
Louis Zamperini, the great Olympic track star, has told of the terrible loneliness of solitude on a life-raft where he spent forty-eight days during the second World War.
In his fascinating book, Alone, Admiral Richard E. Byrd told about the time he spent in bewildering and soul-shattering darkness. He lived alone in a shack that was literally buried in the great glacial icecap that covers the South Pole. He spent five months there. The days were as black as the nights. No living creature of any kind existed within a hundred miles. The cold was so intense that he could hear his breath freeze and crystallize as the wind blew it past his ears.
"At night," he says, "before blowing out the lantern, I formed the habit of planning the morrow's work." He had to, in order to preserve his sanity. "It was wonderful," he continues, "to be able to dole out time in this way. It brought me an extraordinary sense of command over myself; and without constant activity, the days would have been without purpose; and without purpose, they would have ended -- as such days always end -- in disintegration."
The Loneliness of Society
Probably you think that in that frozen wasteland, Richard Byrd was of all people most lonely. But the Loneliness of Society is far worse than the loneliness of solitude, for there is loneliness in great cities far worse than his.
That poor creature living in the dingy tenement who never receives a letter, who never hears one word of encouragement, who never experiences the handclasp of a friend -- that wealthy society leader whose money has bought everything but love and happiness -- each knows a loneliness few can understand.
There is the loneliness of the street people living in doorways or cardboard boxes, scrounging food in garbage cans -- a unique loneliness.
A recent television program showed the demoralizing loneliness of some of our neglected and forgotten old people in dilapidated institutions. The aimless sitting, the vacant eyes, haunted me. They are the living dead. Yet in the background an old derelict, with one finger, was picking out on an equally derelict piano, "What a friend we have in Jesus."
In John 5 we read about Jesus as He made His way through the narrow streets of Jerusalem. When He reached the sheepgate by the pool of Bethesda, He observed the great multitudes plagued with various infirmities, waiting to be moved into the water. Suddenly He noticed a poor creature who seemed more needy than all the rest, and tenderly He asked, "Do you want to get well?"
The helpless paralytic looked up and answered, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred." Think of it, thirty-eight long, weary years, this bundle of pain had been buffeted by the surging human tide of Jerusalem, and after all these years, he must say to Jesus, "I have no one to help me." He was absolutely friendless.
You can have a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Jesus Christ can make life joyful, satisfying and glorious to you. All over the world are millions of men and women who love and serve Jesus Christ. The moment you accept Him, you are closer to them than you are to your own blood relatives.
