The Holiday Season is here, again.  For many, it is a time of joy, pleasant reflections and being thankful.  For others, it is a time of Loneliness and feelings of abandonment even by friends which often occurs when someone throws in the towel, and simply walks away for some reason or another.  Even so, my mind travels to melodies of yesteryear which continue to resound,  today.  One vocalist sings: “No, never alone, no never alone, He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone”, and the composer wrote: “No man is an island”.  In support to both these claims, the Scriptures declare that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is a friend who sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24).  The prior chapter of Proverbs declares that a friend loves at all times. When we see the word “All”, it is conclusive and leaves nothing out.  Moreover, regardless to who walks away, and who does not come, God has promised to be a present help in the time of need.   When we permit ourselves to believe this, we easily see loneliness as being the product of displaced attention. Then, we can accept it to be a truth that no man is an island, no man stands alone, as we agree with Fred Waring, the composer who went on to write: “each man’s joy is joy to me, each man’s grief is my own…we need one another, so I will defend each man as my brother…each man as my friend”.