Loneliness doesn’t wait for an invitation. Sometimes, it doesn’t even wait for you to be alone. Quietly, it can gnaw on you, even in a crowd. It could be in a thousand stony eyes that look through you, in feet that automatically move around you, or in heads that nod polite acknowledgement and move on quickly because your existence didn’t matter enough to engage their conscious thought. The solitary loneliness of the wilderness would be kinder. Fresher. But the worst kind of loneliness of all is the loneliness of rejection. To be known, and seen, and still cast aside. To be intentionally marooned. At least with a crowd you can imagine that maybe if you had the right opportunity and started the right conversations the strangers around you might eventually become friends. Not so with the rejection. The betrayal. The abandonment. They did know. And you’re still alone.

I’ve felt the cold wind of a literal door slamming in my face, the sudden full stop ending what I had thought was a good story. I’ve heard the accusations ringing in my ears—if I listen I can hear them still—and I’ve seen the wavering doubt in the eyes of people I trusted as they weighed up the case against me. I’ve been marooned in rooms full of people. I’d rather be dropped in the desert. It wouldn’t be as lonely. And I know I’m not the only one. I thank God that this is not my current experience of life, but even in a world full of people the truth is that every one of us feels alone sometimes.

Even God has felt it. When Jesus became a man, he took on the fullness of our humanity—including our loneliness. Isaiah 53:3 summarises his experience:

“He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.”

Despised. Rejected. Betrayed by one of his closest friends. Abandoned by all the rest. Hated without cause. Condemned without justice. Mocked. Shamed. Publicly executed in the most cruel manner humans could conceive with all their perverted genius. Even heaven itself was silent to his cries—“my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus died completely alone. He died under the weight of all our sin, all our wrongs that separated us from God, and separated us from each other. Under the sin that built all these walls and barriers and brought all of this isolating loneliness into our world in the first place. He did it on purpose. He knew that only his willing sacrifice could break the awful separation our sin had caused. He knew that only his resurrection could win a place of belonging in God’s home, God’s family, forever, for anyone who puts their trust in him and receives his forgiveness. Have you? The one who faced loneliness in the most extreme form possible has promised his people, “I will never leave you”. Never. You may still feel lonely in the company of others, and still be rejected by some of them, but if you have given your life to Jesus, then you have a home where you will always belong. He sees. He knows, and understands. With him, you are never—ever—alone.