The one time popular Gospel song, "Where No One Stands Alone" contained this line: "There's nothing worse than being alone." It is more than pious rhetoric or empty nattering.
Some years ago we were called on to conduct the funeral of a man who, after having lived most of his life in the community, had spent his last few years in the nursing home of a nearby community. The funeral director stated that attendance at the service would likely be limited. With a degree of amazement, he subsequently commented that it was the first public funeral he had ever directed to which not one person came. There was a certain quality of melancholy to it all.
John's Gospel records an instance of aloneness conducive to something of a similar sense. A pool on the Temple grounds was known for the healing experiences that occurred there following times in which a "stirring of the waters" took place. One must, however, be first into the water after such phenomenon. This was the setting for John's account of a man who had been ill some thirty-eight years.
While recognizing the logical response of others in frantically pressing forward (no doubt assisted by friends and relatives) when the waters were stirred, the story was different for this man. From his conversation with Christ, it was apparent that he had been at the pool many times. Why the lack of results? "I have no one to help me" (John 5:1-9). He was obviously alone - at least in the sense of someone sufficiently concerned as to be willing to spend time and effort on his behalf.
Scripture often addresses the theme of aloneness. Thus, for example, the Old Testament assurance: "Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God" (Isa. 41:10) or again, Matthew's last recorded words of our Lord, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matt. 28:20).
The matter does not end there. At Christ's return, all mankind ("all the nations") will be called to account on the basis of Christ's personal identification with the hurting and needy: "I was hungry, thirsty, in want of shelter and clothing, ill and in prison." Judgment will then be rendered on the basis of response (Matt. 25:31-46).
How does this all apply to the present community of faith? James offers these words: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: 1.) To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and 2.) to keep oneself unspotted from the world" (Js. 1:27).
As conservative believers, have we sometimes emphasized the latter to a neglect of the former?
Burl Ratzsch
