Day 22

 People are lonely, I think, in our day for two reasons.  First, modern mechanization and industrialism have destroyed to a considerable extent the natural community groupings of a previous society.  Life has been fragmented and it unity destroyed, so that we work with one group of people, play with another, and worship with another.  Since fellowship is based upon the things we share together, it is difficult for real fellowship to exist under these circumstances.  The other day at breakfast I overheard an old lady telling another old lady what a bad night she had spent; and I wondered, since man does not live by bread alone, whether part of her physical misery was not due to the that she lived alone in a lonely hotel.  We are meant to love and be loved, and to belong one to another.  This is a fragmented and lonely age.

Secondly, while the fellowships of business, sport, and society which exist all around us are good, they are not complete.  They have meaning, but not enough meaning.  Every wide-awake, groping soul, while accepting and enjoying these other groupings, yearns for something more, something deeper, finer,   grounded in Eternity and in God’s purpose for our lives.  Each man wants a home for his soul; and man’s souls is too great to be satisfied by any natural grouping of earth.  We want a deeper fellowship which will enrich the meaning of other fellowships.  People are hungry because they do not belong to a universal fellowship whose members are knit together by a common loyalty to the highest possible cause.

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