When no one calls

The phone is on the table and it has not lit up all day. The weekend stretched out in front of you on Friday and now it is Sunday night and you spoke to no one but a cashier. Your birthday came, and the people who should have known did not know, or did not say. You are not sure which is worse.

Here is the answer, and it is not a small one. God is near to you tonight, not as a consolation prize for people whom no one else wanted, but as the Father who has been near to the lonely since before there were phones. He set Himself the work of settling the lonely in families. Jesus promised not to leave His people as orphans. That nearness is the real thing, and it is also the thing that will, in time, put other people back in the room. Both parts are true, and this article is about both.

The psalms already know this room

You might expect Scripture to hurry you out of loneliness with a cheerful verse. It does not. It sits down in the room with you and describes it.

Look to my right and see; no one attends to me. There is no refuge for me; no one cares for my soul. I cry to You, O LORD: “You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.”

Psalm 142:4–5

David wrote that in a cave, hunted, with no one attending to him. Look to my right and see. That is a man turning to the place where a friend should be and finding nobody. No refuge. No one who cares for my soul. He does not pretend. He does not tidy the feeling up for God. He says it exactly.

And then, in the same breath, he says: I cry to You. You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living. Not in the next life, but in this one, in the land of the living, on a Sunday night with a dark phone. David does not get out of the cave first and then find God. He finds God in the cave.

Another psalm gives you the shortest prayer you may ever need.

Turn to me and be gracious, for I am lonely and afflicted.

Psalm 25:16

Turn to me. I am lonely. That is the whole request. If you have nothing else in you tonight, you have that, and it has been prayed by God’s people for three thousand years. It is a prayer He has answered before.

His nearness is not a runner-up prize

There is a lie that sits very close to loneliness. It says that God’s company is what you get when you could not get any other kind. The people with full tables have each other, and you have God, and everyone knows which is better.

Scripture turns that upside down. God’s nearness is the first thing, not the last. Adam had God before he had Eve. Jesus, who had crowds around Him, went off alone to be with the Father because that was the company He wanted most. The saints who were left in prisons and on islands were not receiving a lesser portion. They were receiving the portion David called his refuge in the land of the living.

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, for God has said: “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.”

Hebrews 13:5

That promise is quoted in a passage about money, of all things, because the writer is talking about contentment, and contentment stands on one fact: He will never leave you and never forsake you. Every human being in your life can leave. Some already have. He cannot, because He has said He will not, and He does not break His word.

And Jesus made the promise personal on the night before He died, to men who were about to lose Him.

I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

John 14:18

I will not leave you as orphans. He knew the word for what they were about to feel. Then He gave them the Spirit, so that the nearness would not depend on a body in the room. That same Spirit is in every believer tonight. If you belong to Christ, you have never once been alone in the way you fear. You have been unaccompanied, which is real and hard, but not abandoned. There is more on how God settles the lonely in families in What it means that God is Father.

Why the phone still matters

None of this means God wants you to stay alone. The same Father who is near to you is also the one who, in the psalm, settles the lonely in families. He made you for other people, and He usually answers the prayer of the lonely through people. So the second half of the comfort is that He is going to send someone, and He will very likely ask you to do something first.

That may feel unfair. You are the one who was not called. Why should you be the one to reach out? Because the Father usually works through the person who is already praying, and tonight that is you. Jesus told His disciples that whoever wants to be great must be a servant. Loneliness is one of the places where that gets tested. The first move is often yours, not because you deserve to make it, but because you are the one He is with right now.

Three small things this week

Do not try to fix your whole life. Do three things.

Send one text. Tonight, or tomorrow morning if it is late. Pick one person, anyone you have not spoken to in a while, and send something plain: thinking of you, how are you doing. Do not explain your loneliness. Do not wait to feel confident. You are not asking them to rescue you. You are opening a door, and doors open from the inside.

Try one church. This Sunday, go to a church near you where the Bible is opened and Jesus is preached. Sit where you like. Stay for the whole service and for whatever comes after it, even if you stand by the wall with a cup. Do this for four Sundays before you decide anything. Families take time to settle into, and the Father is not in a hurry.

Pray one psalm aloud. Read Psalm 142 out loud, all of it, every night this week. Say it as your own. Then add these lines, or your own:

If the loneliness has gone on a long time and has started to feel like darkness rather than emptiness, if you have stopped eating or sleeping or wanting to be here, see a doctor and tell someone at the church. That is not weakness. And if you are thinking about ending your life, please call your local emergency number or a crisis line right now. This site has a page called Help now with real numbers. You do not have to be sure you are in crisis to call.

He is on the other end tonight

David looked to his right and saw no one, and then he cried to God and was heard. That is the pattern. The looking is real. The no one is real. And the crying out is answered.

The phone may stay dark tonight. He will not. Say the short prayer, send the one text, and go to sleep in the company of a Father who has never once let a child of His go unanswered.