JEAN ROSENSTEIN SAT down at a small table in her cramped, one-bedroom apartment and painfully put her thoughts on paper…

The arthritis in her fingers made the writing difficult and painful, but she continued.  The scrawled words read, “I’m so lonely I could die.  So alone.  I cannot write.  My hands and fingers pain me…I see no human beings.  My phone never rings…I’m so very old, so very lonely.  I hear from no one…Way past eighty years.  Should I die?  Never had any kind of holidays, no kind.  My birthday is this month…Sometimes I even feel sure the world ended, and I’m the only one on earth.  How else can I feel?  Oh, dear God, help me.  Am of sound mind, so lonely, very, very much.  I don’t know what to do.”

She put the letter in an oversized yellow envelope along with some money and six stamps and mailed it to the Los Angles Times newspaper.  The money was to pay for the call if someone would just call to talk to her.  The stamps were for anyone who would take the time to write.  In a city surrounded by millions of people, Jean Rosenstein felt alone.  And what happened?  First, a reporter called and said he would like to visit.  Mrs. Rosenstein was delighted.  She had not had a visitor for a long, long time.

She described her painfully accurate situation to the reporter.  “If you are alone, you die every day…Sometimes I just dread to see myself wake up in the morning.”  The newspaper printed her letter along with a story.  Within days thousands of letters and cards poured into the little apartment.  Visitors began to stream in and out to talk to the lonely lady who had no friends.  So many people called that she finally had to take the phone off the hook.  Letters came from elderly people, young couples sent pictures of their children.  People responded from all over the world.  She said, “This will last a lifetime.”

THOUGHT: How many Mrs. Rosensteins are in the city which you live–some lost in vast cities, some in convalescent hospitals, some in shabby apartments, some on farms–all forgotten people, forgotten by children and former acquaintances, forgotten by people who are too busy to care?  All that is necessary to destroy loneliness is the one real friend.  If there is a Jean Rosenstein living near you, a person who needs your friendship as badly as you need to extend it?  Take a look, friend, and reach out to that person.  (Harold J. Sala)

“A man who has friends must himself be friendly, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”  Proverbs 18:24

–Mike Benson