First used at the Hartford East Maple Street Chapel on May 10, 2009. The main verses are from the first chapter of the Book of Job, with further quotes from Romans 4: 18-25.

Lyrics from a Barbra Streisand song…

Self-contained and self-content
No promises to keep
I’ve got things so together
That I just can’t fall asleep
Walked the night and drank the moon
Got home at half-past four,
And I knew that no-one marked my time
As I unlocked my door.
It’s really lovely to discover
That you like to be alone
Not to owe your man an answer
When he gets you on the phone
Not to share a pair of pork chops
When you crave champagne and cheese
And your aim becomes to please yourself
And not to aim to please
Oh they sold me when they told me
Two can live as cheap as one
But I’m learning twice your earning
Doesn’t mean it’s twice the fun
If you spend each dime and all your time
On someone else’s schemes
I’m not needy but I’m greedy
And I live my deepest dreams
Take an hour in the shower
Use the water while it’s hot
In the tub a hand to scrub my back
Is all I haven’t got.

Self-aware with self-esteem
Is selfishness a crime?
I take the day for quite a ride
And I take my own sweet time
Time to spare and time to share
And grateful I would be
If just one [darn] man would share the need
To be alone with me.

       The song is entitled ‘Lullaby To Myself’, and is the closing track on her ‘Streisand Superman’ album, which dates from the early ‘70’s. Even though groups like the Beatles and Three Dog Night ruled the charts during my high-school days, Barbra was still one of my favorites, and I had, and Have, a number of her albums to prove it. Over the years, I have made eight-track and cassette tapes of most of them, and today, of course, I have the cds, and Many is the time I have been driving along, in cars, vans, and, yes, semis, belting them out just as loud as I could as I sang along with her! And it really is funny how I really never noticed how many of them were crying songs until the last few years.

       Another thing I would listen to as I was driving the semi, many years ago, all over the country was a collection of the entire NIV version of the Bible read in a ‘dramatic’ format, which simply means that they used different people to read the different parts… there was one voice for narration, one that was always God’s, one for Abraham, one for Moses, etc., etc., and they would also add occasional music and sound effects… but What was said was word-for-word the NIV translation! Now, since one of the main reasons I listened to music and such as I drove was to help me stay awake and alert, these were not ones I would put on as I was trying to make it all the way home from a 12-hr run at 1 o’clock in the morning… But for a time, I Did try to listen to one full cd at least 3-4 times a week. Occasionally there might be a gap of 2-3 weeks, and if I thought it was necessary I might listen to some over again to refresh where I had left off, and so I got to know Genesis thru Job pretty well… but it seemed like every time I got to Job I would just get aggravated and confused and would give-up on it for a time. Finally, I just gave up on trying to understand it, and just moved on to the other books… unfortunately, I quit driving long-distance before I made it all of the way through the Old Testament, but I amaze myself, sometimes, with how much of that I do recall and draw on from time-to-time!

       But I have Never understood Job! I mean, it’s bad enough that God lets Satan destroy his property and his family, and then even to attack his physical body, just to prove a point… but what Really gets me is God’s answer to Job when he challenges Him for an explanation… essentially, God replies, “Who do you think You are to question Me?! I AM GOD!!” And that answer just bothered me! On occasion I would have an opportunity to discuss those feelings with various ‘learned’ people, but I really can’t say I ever had any definitive answer… one tried to explain it by saying that the book of Job was a metaphorical story… that is, it wasn’t a real story about a real person, but one intended to illustrate a point… I question that on a Number of levels, but even if it were true, I Still have to ask, What Is the Point?… and it just seemed like nobody ever had a real answer…

       Some years ago I wrote a very different ‘sermon’ on pretty much these same verses… and my take on it then was that ‘God never gives us more than we can handle’… and even though that has become a cliché of sorts over the years, it Is a very true statement! At that time, I told about a number of things that had happened to me over the years that ‘just weren’t fair’, but in the end made the point that it was Each of those things, and a whole slew of others, that have molded and shaped me into the person I am today… and that it is from all of those experiences that I am able to draw many of my stories that let me reach out and connect with people in such a way as to be able to Then reach them with God’s story as well! God knows what He’s doing! Imagine that! But I was not as familiar with the rest of the book of Job at that time as I am today… and as true as all that might be, I Still don’t like God’s answer!

       Have you ever argued with God… over Anything? Boy! I have! “God, why did You lead me to work with the youth group when the kids won’t listen to a single word I say to them?” “God, why did You have so-and-so ask me to apply for that position when You knew the others wouldn’t even consider my application, even after I spent two weeks preparing it?” “God, why did You let me do this?” “God, why did You let me do that?” “God, why did you…”… well, you get the idea… and, perhaps, perceive a pattern emerging… Yes, I often pondered why so many people might have died in a storm, or why a church building was split-apart by tornados, or why so many people have to suffer in so many different ways! And I would often talk to Him about these things, and seek to make some kind of sense out of them… But the things I Really got upset about… the things that made me raise my voice and cry out in anguish, “God, WHY?!?”… were almost always personal things… things that affected, or had to do, with me, personally! And often as not, the things that I got Most upset about were the things that came about from my own mistakes!!! And I wanted to know… no, I Demanded to know… why He had let things go the way they did… and the only answer I ever heard was the one He gave Job… “Because I Am God!”… and I Really didn’t like that answer!!

And so, I would argue the point… Oh, I could find all kinds of logical reasons and explanations to excuse my thoughts and actions… I could even come up with Biblical examples to defend the things I wanted to believe… and I would, again, cry-out, “God, if I’m wrong, then You need to hit me alongside the head with a baseball bat to get my attention and show me!” Later, I changed that to a 2×4, and then a 4×4… and once He decided to actually do it, it took a full 6×6 to get through this thick skull of mine that I was just flat wrong about some things! But I still wanted to know Why what I thought was wrong… and far too often, I still could only hear, “Because I Am God!” … But you know what? Eventually, that answer began to make sense!

In the lyrics of the song I read to you at the beginning of all of this, Barbra is describing a person who is newly alone and trying desperately to convince herself how much she enjoys it all… only to reveal her True desires in the last verse…

Time to spare and time to share
And grateful I would be
If just one [darn] man would share the need
To be alone with me.

As I said earlier, for all of the years that I have sung this song, and her many others, it wasn’t until the last few years that I found myself tearing up at the messages in them… loneliness is a terrible thing! And again, I would cry out to God, “Why do we have to be so alone?!” And the point of All of this has been to lead me up to where I might try to answer that question!

       God created us with a free spirit, and with the ability to think and reason for ourselves. He didn’t have to do that. He could’ve made each of us simple-minded little robots, tamely obeying Him in every matter, and demurely worshipping Him without end… we would all have been ‘happy’ because we would never have known any other condition to be. Wouldn’t that have been nice? Everybody happy little robots, just scurrying around the earth doing our little robot-like things, with no cares and no worries in the world! But God didn’t want that… not for us… and not for Him!

First… think for a moment… where do we get our strength from? …That is, how do we each develop the personalities and backbone that becomes this person we each call ‘Me’? By living through and dealing with each of the trials and tribulations that living life freely presents us with! And what would God gain if the only reason we Worshiped Him was because we were just programmed to do so? God wants us to Worship Him out of the love and reverence we have For Him… and that can only come about if we are free to live our lives the way we choose… free to make decisions… free to make mistakes… free to be Free!

But at the same time, we have to accept that Having that freedom is what makes each of us an individual… and it is that very individuality that makes each of us alone… an island, if you will, in the sea of humanity! So, in that sense, one of the ‘costs’ of our being free is that we each must also be alone. And some people have a Lot of trouble dealing with that loneliness…

I know loneliness… I think I’ve read to you, before, a portion of a letter I wrote to one of the kids in the youth group I worked with some years ago… “There have been a lot of times in my life when I was alone. I don’t mean physically, but mentally, spiritually, and psychologically alone. In other words, I could be at a high school dance or football game and surrounded by hundreds of people and feel totally alone. I could be at a church service or youth event with countless others and feel totally alone. I could be with family or friends, or even that ‘special someone’ and feel totally alone. But through it all, when I look back on my life from this end I can see that I have NEVER been totally alone! Even during the years of my life that I tried to deny even the existence of a ‘god figure’, I can see now that God never denied my existence, and has always been there.”

You know, we all really need to take these words of Job’s to heart, and strive to understand the full meaning of…

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,

and naked I will depart.

The Lord  gave and the Lord  has taken away;

may the name of the Lord  be praised.”

Yes, I know, those words are probably best known for being spoken graveside for many generations… but Job was very much alive when he spoke them, meaning for them to apply as he lived… he wanted it to be Very clear that he accepted that all he had and/or was was of God… and as such, the disposition of any-or-all of those things was totally of God as well!

So… what about us today? As far as I know, each of us are still born naked… we all come into the world with nothing… but I ask you… do we each leave with nothing? Many people do! But does everybody?

In Rom 4:18-25 we read…

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead — since he was about a hundred years old — and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness — for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

       As a Christian, each of us has hope! What ever questions might seem unanswered… what ever problems might seem unsolvable… whatever darkness seems impenetrable… we have hope! Even as we draw our very last breath of life on this plain, we have hope! And it is all because that when God says, “I Am God!”… we know in our hearts that there is No other answer!

As I get older, I find that I need to pay more attention to those words… I need to be more aware of others who are struggling with that sense of emptiness that often comes from loneliness… I need to acknowledge far more vehemently than I have that God Does Know What He’s Doing… and I need to understand that when God says to me, ‘Because I AM GOD!’, I need to pay more attention to what He is Saying… as do we ALL!!!