Prayers for loneliness

When the flat goes quiet

For the hours between getting home and going to bed, when there is nobody to tell about your day and the evening stretches out longer than it should.

• The hour after the door closes

  The door is shut and the flat is quiet, God, and I do not know what to do with this evening. I am not asking you to fill it. Sit in it with me until it is late enough to go to bed.

• Too early to go to bed

  God, it is only seven o'clock. Stay.

• When my own voice sounds strange

  I have not spoken aloud to anyone since yesterday, Lord. You know my sitting down and my rising up, so you know that already. I am not asking for much tonight. Only that you notice, and that you stay while I make the tea.

• Another meal on my own

  The same table, the same chair, the same plate. Bless it anyway. Thank you for the food, God, and for another evening of being fed. Keep the quiet from persuading me that this is all there will ever be.

Lonely in a crowded room

For the loneliness that arrives in company, at the back of church, at a party, in a meeting, in a marriage, at your own kitchen table, when everyone is friendly enough and nobody actually knows you.

• After a service where nobody spoke

  I went, Lord. I stood and sat and sang and walked back to the car without one person saying my name. I am not going to pretend that did not hurt. Show me whether to go back there, and if not there, where. Do not let this be the thing that ends it.

• In the middle of the party

  God, I am standing in somebody's kitchen holding a drink I do not want, and I would like to go home. Give me twenty more minutes of nerve, and one real conversation if there is one to be had.

• Lonely at my own kitchen table

  We have been in the same house all evening, God, and neither of us has asked the other a real question. I am not building a case. Show me one honest thing to say this week, and keep me kind when I say it.

• Needed all day, known by nobody

  Someone has needed me since six this morning, Lord, and not one of them asked how I am. I love them. I am still lonely. Both of those are true at once. Hold the part of me that nobody asked after today.

• Known, not only seen

  God, I am in a room full of people and I am alone. You know how that is possible.

When nobody checks on you

For the weeks when you are always the one who messages first, and for the anger and the embarrassment that arrive together once you notice it.

• The phone that did not ring

  God, I have checked it all day. I have been the one who messages first for months and I am worn out with it. Turn to me. I am desolate and I am not being dramatic.

• When the plan was made without me

  Lord, they arranged it and did not think to ask. Perhaps it meant nothing. It does not feel like nothing. Keep me from building a case against people who are only busy, and keep me from pretending I do not mind.

• When I am angry about it

  I am angry with the people who did not turn up, God, and some of that anger is aimed at you. You can have it. Better here than carried round all week pretending it is not there.

When reaching out feels impossible

For the message you have typed and not sent, and for the tiredness of going first again when the last few times it went nowhere.

• Before I press send

  The message is written and I have not sent it, Lord. What frightens me is the silence afterwards. Give me the nerve to send it, and if nothing comes back, keep me from deciding that I am the problem.

• Going first again

  God, I am tired of waiting to be chosen. Show me one person to ask this week, and let me ask plainly, without wrapping it up so that a no would not sting.

• When I have been let down before

  God, you know why I stopped trying. Some of that was other people and some of it was me. Heal what I can bear to have healed. Make me brave enough to try once more, slowly, with someone safe.

• For one ordinary friendship

  Lord, I am not asking for a crowd. One person who replies. One kitchen I could turn up at without an invitation. You have always been the God of the people nobody was counting, and tonight that is me. I am asking, and I am not going to pretend I know when.

For someone else on their own

For a parent in a quiet house, a friend who has stopped replying, the person who slips out before anyone can speak to them. Prayers for them, and for your part in it.

• For a parent in an empty house

  God, my mum is in that house all day with the television on for company. Be near her at four in the afternoon when the light goes. Put someone at her door this week. Remind me to ring her before the week runs out.

• For the man who slips out first

  Lord, there is someone at the back of church who goes before anyone can speak to him. I do not know whether he wants to be spoken to. Give me something to say on Sunday, and let it be ordinary.

• For a friend who has gone quiet

  She has stopped replying, God, and I cannot tell whether she wants space or wants someone to push. Be with her in whichever it is. Keep me from disappearing as well. Show me what to send.

Bible verses about loneliness

What each passage meant where it was written, and what it does and does not offer you now.

• She called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “You are a God who sees,”

  Genesis 16:7–13

  Hagar is a slave, pregnant by her mistress's husband, sitting by a spring in the desert because the household made her life unbearable. Nobody came after her. The name she gives God is not something she was taught. It is what she worked out on her own, that she had been looked at. Note that she is then sent back into a hard situation. Being seen did not end the difficulty.

• The LORD’s angel came again the second time, and touched him, and said, “Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for you.”

  1 Kings 19:1–8

  Elijah has just won the biggest contest of his life and is now under a tree at the end of himself, asking God to let him stop. God's first response is not correction and not a plan. It is sleep, then food, then more sleep, then more food. Only after that comes a sentence taking his exhaustion seriously, that the road ahead is more than he has strength for. If you are lonely and worn out, this passage starts with a meal.

• Turn to me, and have mercy on me, for I am desolate and afflicted.

  Psalm 25:16–18

  Three lines, and the first is blunt to the point of rudeness. There is no build-up, no praise section, no explanation of why God should bother. He asks, gives a reason, and stops there. Two lines later he asks for forgiveness as well, which is not him conceding that the loneliness is his own fault. It is one voice asking for everything at once. If you have been trying to compose something worthy before you pray, this is permission to stop and just say the thing.

• God sets the lonely in families.

  Psalm 68:4–6

  This line ends up on cards and in sermons as a promise that a family is on its way. In the psalm it sits beside the fatherless and the widows, people with no legal standing at the time, and it is a claim about God's character and about what his people were meant to do for the unattached. Read as a claim it holds. Read as a timetable for your own life it will break your heart.

Where these verses get misused

Verses about loneliness get handed out as instructions. Hebrews 10:25 becomes a reason to tell you that you would only feel this way if you turned up more often, which is not what it says. Psalm 68:6 gets read as a guarantee of a spouse or a family by a certain date. And a general sense that God should be enough can make wanting human company sound like weak faith. It is not weak faith. If this has gone on for months and is affecting your sleep or your health, tell your GP, and tell one person. If it has gone further than that, to a place where you are not sure you want to be here at all, please do not sit with it alone tonight. Tell someone today, a doctor or an urgent care service, and if you can, one person who will stay near you while you do.

Questions people ask

Is it wrong to feel lonely if I have God?

No. Scripture is full of lonely people and not one of them is told off for it. Hagar in the desert, Elijah under a tree at the end of himself, Paul in a courtroom with everyone gone. In each case what arrives is presence and practical help, not a lecture about faith. Wanting human company is not a gap in your belief. It is part of being a person.

I keep praying about it and nothing changes. What now?

Nobody can tell you why some prayers are answered quickly and others are not, and anyone who claims to is guessing. What we would say is this. Keep praying, and treat the practical steps as part of the answer rather than a substitute for it. The invitation you send, the group you attend twice, the counselling, the call to your GP. None of that is a failure of trust. Prayer and effort are not rivals.

Why do I feel loneliest at church?

Because it is the place that promises belonging, so the gap between the promise and a Sunday where nobody speaks to you is wider there than anywhere else. It is very common and it is rarely anybody's fault, which somehow makes it worse. Attending more is not automatically the cure. Whatever your tradition looks like, whether people stand about with coffee afterwards or leave quietly when the liturgy ends, the walk out of a building where you were prayed alongside and not spoken to feels the same. What tends to help is smaller and repeated: the same few people at a set time each week, or a job that gives you a reason to be in the room and a reason to be missed.

What do I pray when I have no words left?

Use somebody else's. Psalm 25:16 is one sentence, a request and a reason, and nothing more. Say that and stop. You are under no obligation to explain yourself, to be fair to anyone, or to finish. Sitting in a chair saying nothing at all, with the intention of being with God, is prayer. Some nights that is the whole of it, and it counts.