Sunday is the Loneliest Day of the week for One Million Older People

Sadly Sunday is the loneliest day for one million older people recent research conducted by ICM for the Royal Voluntary Service has revealed.

The ICM research reveals that loneliness and isolation experienced by older people is compounded by lack of contact with their family, with 13% saying they always feel lonely on a Sunday because it’s such a family day. For 10% of older people, their nearest child lives more than an hour’s drive away (40 miles plus), making that daily or weekly contact even more difficult.

Many older people, particularly miss sitting down to a meal with their family and don’t enjoy a meal when they cannot share it with someone else and may even eat poorly becoming malnourished as a result.

There is a challenge here for churches to make their services more hospitable with food like in Messy Church and to build community though hosting community meals. An excellent example of this is the Church in the rural community of Barningham, which periodically holds the Barningham Parish Lunch.

It’s such a shame that although in the early church, eating together was an important part of church life, today it’s been reduced to a tea or coffee after a service and communion has been reduced to a sip of wine and a chew on a wafer. 

Perhaps we need to demonstrate the generosity of our invitational God and rediscover the true meaning of feast days; hosting community meals and creating the opportunity for people to enjoy eating together and each other’s company.