Prayer for Loneliness

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Lord, I am alone tonight. Maybe physically alone in the room. Maybe surrounded by people, but alone in my heart. Either way, the ache is the same. The deep, hollow sense that no one really knows me. That no one is really near me. That I am a single point in a vast indifference.

You know this ache, Lord. Not just observed it from the outside: felt it. In Gethsemane, you took Peter, James, and John with you and said, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me. And you found them sleeping three times, the closest friends you had on earth.

So when I bring you my loneliness, you do not look down on me. You do not say, you should pray more. You do not say, make better friends. You sit with me the way your friends did not sit with you.

Lord, I bring you the loneliness, the friends who used to be close and have drifted, the phone that does not ring, the text that goes unanswered, the invitation that does not come, the party that everyone seems to be at except me. I bring you the loneliness within marriage if I am married, the strange ache of lying next to someone and feeling like a stranger, the disappointment of having someone there but not really there, the longing for a depth of intimacy that has not yet come. I bring you the loneliness within family, the relatives who do not understand, the siblings who have moved on, the parents who have aged or died, the children who have grown up and built their own lives.

I bring you the loneliness of ministry, of leadership, of any position where people look to me, but no one looks at me. The crowds who want what you give through me, but not me.

I bring you the loneliness of loss. The chair across the table that is empty. The side of the bed that is cold. The silence of a house that used to ring with voices.

I bring you the loneliness of a dream that did not happen. The marriage that did not come. The children that were not given. The career that did not work out. The life I imagined that is not the life I am living.

Lord, you are with me. You said in the Gospel of Matthew, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age. Always. Even now. Even in this room. Even in this loneliness.

You are not somewhere else hoping I will figure it out. You are here. Help me feel that even a little. Not just believe it intellectually. Feel it.

The reality that I am known by the one who made every star and named every angel. The reality that I am loved with a love that is not earned and cannot be lost. The reality that I am companioned by the eternal God himself.

And Lord, in the day-to-day, send me human companions too. Not because you are not enough, you are, but because you designed us for each other. It is not good for the man to be alone, you said in Genesis 2. Send me a friend, a community, a church, a small group, a neighbor I can talk to, someone who shows up.

If you are calling me to a season of solitude for your purposes, give me grace for it. Some saints have been called to this. Mother Teresa wrote, loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. But she also wrote, we can do no great things, only small things with great love. Maybe loneliness is the soil in which great love grows.

Help me reach out tomorrow, Lord. The first move is hard when I am tired and lonely, but the smallest text, the smallest call, the smallest greeting to a stranger in the coffee shop: let me make one move, then another. Loneliness is broken often by small movements toward people, even when I do not feel like it.

And tonight, Lord, hold me. The nearer presence than my own breath. The friend that sticks closer than a brother, as Proverbs 18 says. I am not alone. You are with me. Always.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.