Lonely Now

by Nicky; Buckingham Jamie Cruz

Paperback

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

Reviews

[Kelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a quick read--the majority of it is letters sent to Nicky Cruz along with his responses to them. "The Lonely Now" is what he calls the young people who turn to drugs, sex and other things because they're looking for something filling. He begins the book with a couple of chapters explaining how this book came about. He was back in New York, talking to a couple of guys he used to be in a gang with. (Nicky Cruz used to lead a gang, but left that lifestyle when he accepted Jesus, starting with turning all his weapons into the police. A book called Run, Baby, Run tells his story. I haven't read it, but I've heard parts of it.) The guys comment that things have changed since their younger days, and the younger and younger kids are getting hooked on drugs. Apparently, Cruz gets a lot of letters from young people and parents alike asking for help, so he decided to compile a lot of the letters (some anonymous that he couldn't answer by mail) so that more people could benefit from them.

It was a sad read, but also uplifting in his hopeful responses. He ends the book with a chapter about "turning the world upside down" and not settling for anything less than God and not giving up.

[Esther*]

This is a follow up book of Nicky Cruz’s testimony Run Baby Run. Back in the 1950s Nicky was a gang leader in New York and had a powerful testimony of having his life turned around by God. Through his connections with David Wilkerson and Billy Graham, he went on speaking tours around the world, released books and shared his story on TV and radio. As a result of this, he had hundreds of people writing to him about their own tragic stories, wondering if there was any hope left for them too. This book, released in 1971, is a compilation of many of these letters and his responses.

Many of them are unbearably tragic, about abuse, addiction and desperate actions people have taken in response to these circumstances. As such, it’s difficult to rate this book because it is both heartbreaking and hopeful, especially when we don’t know the outcomes of these people. And Nicky’s responses are also very much a product of his time - while he declares truth in a powerful way (and I expect many of his letters hit home and changed lives), some of his words feel inappropriate due to their direct and reductive statements about people’s complex trauma. I hope that every one of them turned out to be prophetic in their nature, but that people wanting to imitate Nicky’s ministry wouldn’t throw the same sentences at people without discernment.

Probably as a result of this, the book is no longer in print. I found it on my grandma’s bookshelves where it has sat for many decades and saw that it had been given to my uncle as a Sunday School prizegiving! It doesn’t say what year that was but I doubt the Sunday School teachers had checked the content before handing it out as there are some pretty innocence-shattering accounts in there 🫣

[Mette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tårer, glede, fred

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a good book reading me how wonderful god is