There have been times in my life when I felt completely alone. Interestingly, the feeling of being alone does not necessarily mean that there is no one around you; you could be in the midst of a crowd and still feel utterly alone.

I remember a period in my life as a young Christian when I felt that way. I would go to church and see people chatting and laughing with one another before or after the service, while I stood on the margins, more or less as a bystander.

As I grew in my faith, I came to realise that I was never truly alone. The verse that brought this home to me was Hebrews 13:5b: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” This reflects the promise God made to Joshua in Deuteronomy 31:6, when he was commissioned to lead the children of Israel after the death of Moses.

What causes people to feel alone? In a survey conducted by the UK’s Office for National Statistics between December 2023 and January 2024, around a quarter of adults reported feeling lonely always, often, or some of the time. These are striking figures, and they reflect a reality familiar to many, not only in the UK but across the world.

Yet before we can speak of any remedy, it is worth making an important distinction. There is a difference between being alone and feeling lonely. Solitude, the state of being by oneself, is not the same as loneliness. A person can be alone and perfectly at peace; another can be surrounded by people and still feel utterly invisible.

Loneliness is not primarily a circumstance; it is a condition of the heart. This distinction helps us understand why some of the greatest figures in Scripture experienced loneliness even in the midst of ministry and community.

Consider Elijah in 1 Kings 19. We find him under a broom tree in the wilderness, exhausted and desperate, convinced that he was the only faithful person left in Israel. He had just witnessed one of the most dramatic acts of God recorded in the Old Testament, yet here he was: alone, afraid, and asking to die. What is remarkable is how God responds. He does not lecture Elijah or correct his theology immediately. Instead, He provides food, rest, and the gentleness of a still, small voice. He meets him in the wilderness of his loneliness. And then, tenderly, He corrects Elijah’s distorted perception: “I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal.” Loneliness, Elijah’s story warns us, can lie to us about reality.

Paul knew a different kind of loneliness. Writing from prison near the end of his life, he says plainly in 2 Timothy 4:16: “At my first defence, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me.” His loneliness was not imagined; it was real, and it was caused by the failure of people he had trusted. Yet just one verse later, he writes: “But the Lord stood at my side.” Paul’s anchor was not the faithfulness of people, which could be withdrawn, but the presence of Christ, which could not.

Then there is our Lord Jesus Himself, who entered human loneliness more deeply than any of us ever will. In the garden of Gethsemane, He asked His closest friends to watch and pray with Him, but found them asleep. Peter denied Him three times. At the cross, He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But this is precisely the point: Jesus endured the ultimate loneliness, the full weight of God-forsakenness, so that you and I never have to. The promise of Hebrews 13:5b is not a vague comfort; it is grounded in what Christ accomplished at Calvary.

The assurance, then, is this: whatever you are facing, whether you are sitting alone in a quiet house or standing in a crowded room feeling utterly unseen, the promise of God has not changed. He who called Joshua to courage, who met Elijah in the wilderness, who stood at Paul’s side in the courtroom, is the same God who is present with you today.

The church, however, has a part to play. Paul wrote to the Galatians: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). The early church was a community where the lonely found belonging, where the outsider found a name and a place. I was once that young man standing on the edge of a conversation, wondering if anyone would ever notice. Someone eventually did, and it changed everything.

Who might be standing on that edge in your church, your street, or your family right now? May God give us eyes to see them and the courage to cross the room.