That Feeling of Isolation

In an online class on depression that I'm taking, the professor referred to a statement from Ed Welch’s book, Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness, concerning the increase of clinical depression. Welch identifies our current culture and its influence as a major role player and cites the lack of community that feeds the feeling of isolation so prevalent in depression. The feeling that no one cares brings a sense of aloneness, helplessness, and hopelessness that anything can or will change. 

It is my observation that in our culture families tend to drift apart, by miles from sea to shining sea, but also by the demands of life and a perceived lack of need for one another. Questions that were once asked of family, neighbors, or friends are now answered by the click of a mouse. The lack of connections is keenly felt because God put within us a need for community. It takes diligence to pursue that community, however, and the pressures of the culture leave little time or space for its pursuit. Autonomy, that prideful hedge of self-protection, plays a part that is often overlooked and mistaken for strength. It separates more than it strengthens.

It seems so paradoxical, that with the proliferation of social media, that the feeling of isolation is so prevalent. Social media is an illusion to real relationship, and unless we are keenly aware of its opiate effect, more and more will succumb to its desensitization of one another. We tend to hide our real selves behind the screen, and it takes real effort to actually hear one another’s voice and look into one another’s eyes to see the hopes and dreams…or lack thereof.

I am encouraged, however, by current attempts of churches like ours that provide small group opportunities for relationship building. It still takes effort to participate, but it offers a bridge from one person to another and helps to create that feeling of community so needed to combat the aloneness that is often felt. They are occasions when we can connect and look into one another's eyes and hear one another's voice. And, hopefully, hear each other's heart.

Image ~ Ruth Eastman Johnson 1824-1906

public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Hope in Our Hearts

I called a friend to see if she might want to get together sometime this week, out into the beautiful sunshine that we're expecting. "No, I'm really not interested in...." I've been trying to reach out to her, but mostly been put off because of her lack of interest. She sees very few people and seldom goes out of her home. If I didn't realize that she is lonely and in need of friendship and has serious bouts of hopelessness, she'd be so easy to give up on. But that isn't God's kind of love, so I'll wait awhile and try another door.

I know how hopelessness feels. I was there once myself. That and God's love is what compels me to reach out to her and to comfort her with the comfort that I received. I know the importance of God's touch through a human hand. But I fear that perhaps my sequestered friend has been medicated to the point of not feeling much at all beyond herself. It has dulled her senses and awareness. There needs to be some penetration through the barrier that secludes her from reality and the joys of living, to awaken her from her numbness and to help her see that God, in his rich mercy, can rescue her from hopelessness and fill her with joy and peace.

And give her hope in her heart.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, 

so that you may overfow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15:13

J.I. Packer writes in Knowing God--

I have been a believer for more than half a century, but only recently have I appreciated how pastorally profound Paul's prayer was--and is. While there is life, there's hope we say, but the deeper truth is that only while there's hope is there life. Take away hope, and life, with all its fascinating variety of opportunities and experiences, reduces to mere existence--uninteresting, ungratifying, bleak, drab and repellent, a burden and a pain.

People without hope often express their sense of reality and their feelings about themselves by saying they wish they were dead, and sometimes they make attempts on their own life. But hope generates energy, enthusiasm and excitement; lack of hope breeds only apathy and inertia. So for fully developed (as distinct from partly diminished) humanness, there needs to be hope in our hearts.