slow

Do you ever have a day where you're just moving slow?
Some days it's physical, some days it's not.
Today is one of those days...

Anyway, so I'm working on message for this coming Sunday about God and loneliness.

We actually entitled it 'God and being alone', but as I've come closer to the message I realize that was the wrong title. It's about loneliness and that's different than 'being along' It's a challenging topic. (okay, so the entire series is challenging!)

We're surrounded by people a lot of the time and yet so many people feel lonely. It's a longing for deeper relationships, in a facebook world that excels at shallow ones. It's like we've become so mistrusting of people and society in general, that it is becoming more and more difficult to actually have deep meaningful friendships.

Take blogs for instance (since you're reading one!):
Some people use them as public diaries, and simply spew unfiltered thoughts onto the world-wide web for anyone to see. On one level I understand the attraction. There is a desire to vent one's spleen on a regular basis. Many times I have wanted to blog but I simply have not had anything appropriate to blog about! (especially as a pastor, one has to be careful about what one writes in public forums) The problem with using blogs for deeply personal stuff is that there's no discretion being used in terms of who you are venting to. It's like you're trying to share your life with others but from a safe, often anonymous distance.

I've been doing some interesting reading about how people are exploring links between loneliness and issues like depression and addiction. One author wrote that we have bred a generation of isolation. We keep the people around us at a distance. "Never let them see you sweat", right? Remember that TV ad?

A friend of mine was commenting on how many people think that 'nobody understands me', and how in his mind, this is a load of crap. It may well be a load, but the point underlying it seems to be a longing people have to be understood.

There's little point in decrying the evils of technology that are facilitating our own isolation tendencies. We're social people, so we will inevitably be drawn into social settings. The problem is that we seem to be losing our abilities to socialize in meaningful ways. Increasingly people struggle to be truly vulnerable with any close friends, or even to have close friends.

The unfortunate part of human relationships is that it's inevitable that we're going to get hurt from time to time. Each time we do it often makes it more difficult for us in the future because we don't want to get hurt again.

The result in a loneliness that is pervasive in our society.

So that's about it for now.