Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Our reading titled Friend to the Lonely was written by Patricia Raybon.

Holly Cook didn't have one single friend when she moved to London for a job.

Her weekends felt miserable.

The city itself tops the list for feeling blue,

with 55% of Londoners saying they're lonely,

according to a global survey,

compared to just 10% of residents in neighborly, Lisbon, Portugal.

For connection, Holly defied her fears and formed a social media group called the London Lonely Girls Club,

and some 35,000 have joined. Small group meetups every few weeks offer park picnics, art lessons,

jewelry workshops, dinners, and even outdoor exercise sessions with puppies. The challenge of loneliness

isn't new, nor is the healer of our feelings of isolation.

Our eternal God, wrote David in Psalm 68, sets the lonely in families.

He leads out the prisoners with singing.

Asking God to point our way to Christ-like friends is a holy privilege and thus a request we can

freely take to him. A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling,

added David. Praise be to the Lord, to God, our Savior, who daily

bears our burdens. What a friend we have in Jesus. He grants us forever, friends, starting with the

glorious presence of himself every moment.

As Holly says, friend time is good for the soul.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from Psalm 68,

verses 3 through 6, and verse 19.

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