20% of people in the UK admit to loneliness!

I discovered recently that ‘1 A national commission investigating loneliness in the UK in January 2017 showed that a fifth of the population privately admits they are "always or often lonely”’.

Herbert Van Zeller, 1905-1984, once wrote ‘the soul hardly ever realises it, but whether he is believer or not, his loneliness is really a homesickness for God’. That’s quite a statement. Loneliness is deeper than a lack of company and it affects people in all stages of life.

They wouldn’t believe him!

Late on the night of the 14^th of April 1912, the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic - the largest ship then afloat - was steaming at almost full speed across the Atlantic when it collided with an iceberg. The damage caused by the collision was so extensive that in less than three hours the ship had broken in half and sunk. This ‘the Ship of Dreams’ became a nightmare, and over 1500 passengers and crew drowned in the dark freezing water, with only just over 700 being saved. 

The ship was equipped with the latest radios, operated by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company. These radios had a daytime range of 250 miles, but at night up to 2000 miles. The Marconi wireless operators on board - Jack Phillips and Harold Bride - began sending out desperate Morse code SOS radio messages to passing ships pleading with them to come and help.  

Meanwhile, 3000 miles away in the loft of his family’s water-powered corn mill in Pontllanfraith near Blackwood in south Wales, UK, 25-year-old Arthur Moore – Artie to his family and friends - was using his homemade, crude radio equipment, operated by a generator attached to the mill’s water wheel. Artie was already well known by the public because six months earlier he had picked up the Italian government’s Declaration Of War on Libya on his radio, and this had made the front page of the national newspaper The Daily Sketch. Artie was listening to his radio early on the fateful morning of the 15^th of April when around 5 a.m. he picked up faint Morse code radio signals from the Titanic: ‘Require immediate assistance. Come at once we have struck an iceberg. Sinking, we are putting the women off in the boats’. He continued decoding and writing down the signals he was receiving, hardly believing the words he was writing. 

Giving and receiving this Christmas

Giving and receiving this Christmas

Do you appreciate your children and grandchildren? Do the stories of disadvantaged and ill children that you see when the various charitable appeals run pull at your heartstrings? Do you think - ‘that could be me or my child’? Do you wonder how you would cope? We should be truly grateful for how well off we are! It’s another reason why we all need to play our part in giving to charity this festive season. 

Recent political debates are in danger of encouraging a view that says we need to be selfish and look after ourselves. The great tradition in this country has been to be generous and look after the needy, the poor and the disadvantaged.

Have you ever wondered why there is consistently such a need? Why is there cruelty? Why are there disadvantaged children? Why does the problem never go away? What is the cause of the problem? It's one thing to give money to change people's lives it’s another to consider why the situation exists in the first place? That’s just life I hear you say! These things happen!

The Bible tells us why. It is because of sin. Our Forefather, Adam, brought 'sin into the world and death by sin'. If we are honest we are all in the habit of sinning. Sin is dressed up in many guises; pride, selfishness, lust, coveting things and people and so on. Sin rarely only affects me, it affects others as well and sadly it often affects people who have no power to do anything about it i.e. the young, the weak and vulnerable. 

But the good news is things can be different! I do not believe that society can enjoy permanent reform as a result of a political solution. The Bible promises a reformed world when Jesus returns to earth but until then change is made on a ‘case by case’ basis! This is the essence of why Jesus came. He came to bring hope in despair, joy in sorrow and life where there was death. This life is of a different quality. It is the life of God as opposed to human life. It is described in the Bible as ‘eternal life’. Jesus talked about it in terms of knowing God – ‘and this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’, John 17. 3. It describes the quality of life now and well as the length of existence in the next life. This life is available to everyone because of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus but it only becomes effective in a person’s life when they repent and receive salvation as a gift from God.

Please, don't stop giving to good charities this Christmas but also give some thought to your need of forgiveness and salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

Thanks for reading this.

Stephen    

What if Jesus really is the Son of God?

Photo by Christopher Sardegna on Unsplash 

Photo by Soul devOcean on Unsplash

Photo by Szabo Viktor on Unsplash

WHAT IF JESUS REALLY IS THE SON OF GOD?

The Lord Jesus Christ is no ordinary person. I make this statement in the present tense because the Lord Jesus is not just a figure of history but he is, today, still alive in heaven. I don't mean alive in the way we might think about a relative who has died and hope is now in heaven (as a Christian I believe people who have turned from their sin and accepted Jesus as their Saviour will be in heaven when they die but this is not my point at the moment). I mean that Jesus is alive, physically in heaven. Your response might be - impossible and unbelievable!