When You Feel Alone

There are two kinds, and the second is worse. There is the empty flat, the evening with nobody in it. And there is the other one — the full room, the shift with people all around you, and not one of them would notice if you stopped speaking. You can be lonely at a table of eight.

The psalm does not reach for a small example. It goes straight to the worst case anyone could name — the two people who are supposed to be last to go — and it does not argue that they will stay. It just says what happens next.

The verb is the thing. Not the LORD will manage, not will approve. Take me up. Gathered off the floor, the way you lift a child who has fallen and is too tired to get up on their own. It is a physical word, and it is meant to be.

If tonight you are in a country that is not yours, in a room that does not know your name, sending money home to people whose voices you only hear through a phone — you are not forgotten, and you are not failing at faith by finding it hard. Send one message today to someone you have been meaning to. Loneliness lifts a little from both ends.