Psalm 25:16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.

There was a time when I could be in a room with hundreds of people and I felt alone. It wasn’t a matter of not knowing some of the people in attendance, it was the absence of connection on the most intimate level. If we don’t have someone we can open up to with the deepest parts of ourselves, we are alone, even in a crowd.

Loneliness is an affliction of the soul.

Genesis 2:18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

God recognized the issues of loneliness and set the stage to accomplish an end to loneliness.

So what went wrong?

The simple answer is Satan coming along and whispering in Eve’s ear, “What you have isn’t enough.” Believing the lie led to sin and thus the issue of loneliness expanded into the realm of want which made need seem small and insignificant. 

Sin does that, it will not let its victim rest. It causes the victim to want more and more and more, never truly being satisfied. That is what sin does. In the end, it wears out its victim, until they are totally consumed.

There is something to say about people who come together only because they are lonely. The divorce rate in America is high because empty people cannot fill one another.

David’s prayer is earnest and honest. “Turn to me and be gracious to me.” He is asking God to fill the void in his heart.

I’ve been married now for eighteen years, my second marriage, having been a widower. My wife’s fiance died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm. Then we turned to God and prayed the exact same prayer.

“Show me your will for my life.”

God answered both of our prayers with each other. God is good, God is merciful, God knows how best to bring together proper helpmates.

But she is not the One I was talking about when I said “I am not alone.”