A Tapestry of Connection

Sad, sick, and stuck home on the couch after canceling a flight to a conference in Boston, I recently binged the entire season of Ted Danson’s new Netflix series, A Man on the Inside. 

Danson plays the role of Charles, a college professor, lonely and lost after the recent death of his wife, who takes a job as a private investigator inside a retirement home. Hired to solve the mystery of a missing family heirloom, Charles finds himself more invested in his new-found friendships than in cracking the case. The show is not an award-winning masterpiece, but it offered the kind of a heartwarming story that did my aching body and melancholy heart some good. 

One line that sticks with me is something the retirement home’s director tells Charles in his first days as a resident, “For most of the seniors, the threat to their well being isn’t an accident or health, it’s loneliness.”

Loneliness, especially in the last few years, has been declared an epidemic — its own pandemic. Recent reports claim that one in three adults said they feel lonely at least once a week; while one in 10 Americans say they feel lonely every day.

My sense is this loneliness isn’t always a lack of human presence, but connectedness. We feel deep, down lonely inside, lonely in the kind of homesick way that makes us ache for “thy kingdom to come,” not years down the road, but right now, in this very moment. 

I’ve found The Reformed Journal to be an ointment to my loneliness. Each morning, I open my email and find a plethora of messages I immediately delete — advertisements and alerts that beg my attention. I save and savor the RJ messages. They offer me something better: blessed assurances, seething insights, new perspectives, and beauty. They connect me to something weightier than my own weary thoughts.

Nadia Bolz Weber writes that “seeing where God seems to be insistently, dangerously, gorgeously, and hilariously sewing signs of the kingdom is important because seeing signs of the kingdom of heaven loosens us from the kingdom of this world. It frees us from the false promises of human culture and shows us that which is eternal and true and unstoppable.”

I, like many other voices, am asking you to consider an end-of-the year gift to keep the RJ running, to allow us to continue to find ways to stay connected, to wrestle with words and ideas together, to be loosened from the lonely and lost kingdom of this world. 

We hope you’ll give—and receive the forthcoming Reformed Journal books that are part of the “But Wait, There’s More” campaign. But more so, we invite you to be a vital thread in this community’s fabric, where each reader, writer, and contributor weaves a tapestry of connection— a glimpse of the greater masterpiece God is quilting, stitching signs of the kingdom into our midst.

The purple button above or clicking here, will take you to a page with details on this year’s special “But Wait, There’s More” offer–three new books from Reformed Journal Books in 2025!

You can use the same page to give a gift of any amount (please, consider a monthly gift)
or find info on giving by check via mail. (PO Box 1282, Holland, MI 49422)

This concludes our week of fundraising appeals.
You may, of course, donate anytime simply by clicking on the Donate button or link that appears every day.

Thank you very much!

Header photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash