When a well-known author was asked whether he considered the important issues to be inflation, pollution, crime, he answered: " . . . the real issue is loneliness. The family system has dissolved. People are rucking around like the sands of the desert with television blowing them like the wind. How can politics address that loneliness? If only intellectuals could define loneliness!" ^{Theodore H. White, quoted in The Christian Science Monitor, April 26, 1979;}

Loneliness cries out for company—for a particular person, or for many. How does the world address this issue? Much human kindness is being expressed. There are clubs to bring people together. Meals are delivered to shut-ins. Centers for conversation and recreation have sprung up. Television and radio furnish companionship. We cannot be too grateful for the aid that comes from brotherly love, and for the technology that serves good purposes.

A new acquaintance or involvement with a group may afford a sense of relief from isolation. But the basic difficulty has not been uncovered or dealt with until it is addressed from a spiritual standpoint. The fundamental error is the belief that God and man are separated. This belief is founded on, and fostered by, an erroneous view of creation. A false sense of God says to a false sense of man, "It is not good that the man should be alone." ^{Gen. 2:18;} Christ Jesus, on the other hand, declared: "I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me" and "He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone." ^{John 8:16, 29;}

The Master's declarations accord with the spiritual concept of man. Not a separated, isolated being, the real man is the very representative of God. The universe, including man, is pronounced by God complete and good.

Man is not dust. He is spiritual. When we accept our true identity in Spirit, we'll have done with the old dust man—the mistaken concept that we are specks of mortality struggling in antagonistic surroundings. What a lie this is about God and His creation!

There are no miserable spots in God's kingdom. The material senses may suggest that a certain location is remote, a particular country desolate, or a crowded city cold and harsh. But God made all. And He made it spiritual and good. "Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited." ^{Isa. 45:18;} Divine Science reveals the truth of creation, in which the real man is understood as God's spiritual idea dwelling in the consciousness of Love.

A feeling of desolation or isolation suggests that one is cut off from good, but God's offspring could never be cut off from Love's constant care. "God is our Father and our Mother," Mrs. Eddy writes, "our Minister and the great Physician: He is man's only real relative on earth and in heaven." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 151;} Shouldn't we look to this uninterruptible relationship for true happiness and satisfaction?

You may say, "But I want companionship with people—friends, marriage, children. I want someone to talk to, someone to love me." Consider for a moment. These "wants" may not be your real needs! People, friends, children, do not always assuage loneliness.

Does this mean we should be deprived of happy and harmonious companionship? No, but it does mean that we must stop believing our happiness is derived from or rests upon another person or persons. It does mean that we must seek first of all to understand our relationship to God. He has infinite ways to reveal Himself as the source and condition of lasting peace and joy. Everyone we meet or know or love can be seen in the light of our unity with divine Life. Seeing this gives our relationships a stability not obtainable in any other way.

The status of the family is sometimes in turmoil, but in proportion as the family manifests some relation to the truth of being—the indivisible nature of God and His creation—it will rest on firmer foundations. Fleshly ties are soluble. We need to claim our relationship to God, expressing greater self-immolation, faithfulness, trustworthiness, and honesty. In this way the human family will be strengthened and purified.

The material senses suggest that physical contacts are vital to our happiness and that our relationship with God can wait. Perhaps we waver—longing to know and understand God, but tempted to place worldly desires first in our lives. Like Christ Jesus, we can resist temptation and find all we need in the acknowledgment of Spirit, God, with us.

Jesus' mission was not to gain popularity with the many or sympathy from a few. Truth was his constant companion. He came into the world to bear witness to Truth. This is the life purpose of each of us. Following in his footsteps, we may at times be isolated from the world, but we can never be isolated from God, good. And we need never feel lonely. Recognizing and demonstrating our unbroken relationship with our heavenly Father, we can accept our experiences with others—or without them—as opportunities to demonstrate divine Love.

Remember Jesus' encounter with the woman in Nain? The Scriptures give a graphic picture of a widow who had lost her only son. Jesus told her to stop crying, and this command came before he restored the young man to life. Self-pity only puts a black border around a sad picture. The picture needs changing, not emphasizing. Mrs. Eddy tells us: "Truth destroys error. Nothing appears to the physical senses but their own subjective state of thought. The senses join issue with error, and pity what has no right either to be pitied or to exist, and what does not exist in Science." ^{ibid., p. 105.}

Christian Science teaches us to delight in exercising human kindness as an expression of Immanuel (God with us), to refuse to believe that anyone is separated from good, and is suffering as a consequence. The whole concept of loneliness is an error of belief and can be corrected by Truth. We share—we care—because we bear witness to the truth that man is not separated from God.

God has not left us alone.