Job 19:13-15 — He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me. My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger: I am an alien in their sight.

Yesterday I wrote about the way God is everywhere, so that we are never alone. Despite that truth, most of us are lonely from time to time.
Job’s loneliness wasn’t surprising. After all, God has let Satan take his children, his wealth and his health away. Job’s loneliness had three components.
Firstly, his family, his servants, strangers living in his house — they all stayed away from him, were alienated from him. He was a stranger in his own home!
Secondly, Job’s friends and acquaintances have turned on him, believing that he has brought affliction on himself.
Thirdly, and most painfully perhaps, Job suffered from the sense of isolation that those who are sick or injured or abused often feel.
Job wasn’t the only great Biblical figure to suffer loneliness. Let’s look at Elijah, Paul and even Jesus.
Remember what happened to Elijah? He had comprehensively defeated — and disposed of — the priests of Baal. Jezebel, in fury, had come after him with a vengeance. He ends up in a cave, hiding out. When the Lord comes by and asks him what he’s doing, Elijah says “… I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.” (1 Kings 19:14)
Then there’s Paul. At the end of his second letter to Timothy, we find him writing a series of personal messages to his young protégé that make his loneliness clear: “for Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry. And Tychicus have I sent to Ephesus. … At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.” (2 Timothy 4:10-12, 16)
Job’s world got fixed, eventually. Elijah got an immediate answer from the Lord. Paul was immediately comforted too. The very next thing he wrote was “Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.” (2 Timothy 4:17)
Then there’s Jesus. The agonized cry from the cross. His people have rejected Him. His family think He’s crazy. His disciples have run away. And now … “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).
And then came the resurrection. Even when we feel desperately alone, he is there.