Ultimate loneliness

For many people, Christmas is festive.  There are family gatherings, parties, meetings with friends, church services attended together - happy events. 

Some people - particularly single adults - however, may crave long-term, stable companionship - a husband or wife, or at least a stable boyfriend or girlfriend - more than anything else.  For them, festive days such as Christmas or New Year may be unbearably lonely.  They want to have someone to share life with, but can’t. 

There is another kind of loneliness which is even worse - the loneliness of facing a completely materialistic, unfeeling, meaningless world.  All by ourselves, without a personal God to keep us company and to give us hope.  If what we can see is all that there is, then when a person dies, one just disappears and there is nothing left.   That is the worst kind of loneliness. 

That makes this life unbearable in so many ways.  On the one hand, there is ultimately no one to share the struggles facing the harsh, capricious, and unjust realities of life with.   On the other hand, all the efforts, achievements, companionship, and relationships of my life amount to nothing.   My parents, wife, daughters, and friends disappear when I, or anyone of them, dies - never to be seen again.   That is unbearable to even contemplate. 

With faith, we don’t feel so lonely facing life.  It even makes the other kinds of loneliness bearable.  Because there is hope, not just in this miserable world, but in eternity.