Bible verses for loneliness

Yet I am always with You; You hold my right hand.

Asaph, after a long complaint about how well the wicked are doing. Yet is the turn: whatever else is true, he is always with God, and his hand is held.

Turn to me and be gracious, for I am lonely and afflicted.

David says the word outright: lonely. The Bible gives you permission to pray it plainly before asking for anything else.

Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.

David imagines the worst abandonment a person can picture and puts the LORD on the other side of it. Twelve words, and a good one for anyone whose family has let them down.

I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

Jesus on the night before His death, to friends about to lose Him. Orphans is His word, and He chooses it because He knows exactly what the next days will feel like.

I lie awake; I am like a lone bird on a housetop.

The heading calls this the prayer of an afflicted man pouring out his heart. Nothing is resolved in this verse; it is simply the truest sentence in the Bible about lying awake alone.

For where two or three gather together in My name, there am I with them.

Jesus, on what happens when His people gather, even in the smallest number that counts as a gathering. Two is enough, and He is the third.

Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are ever before Me.

God answers a people who felt forgotten. Inscribed on the palms means He cannot open His hands without seeing you, which is a different thing from being remembered.

The LORD is near to all who call on Him, to all who call out to Him in truth.

From David's alphabet psalm of praise, one line for each letter. Near is the promise, and the only condition is calling, in truth, which is to say honestly.

God settles the lonely in families; He leads the prisoners out to prosperity, but the rebellious dwell in a sun-scorched land.

From a psalm of David about God marching out for His people. The lonely are the first group named, and what He gives them is not company for an evening but a family.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle by the farthest sea, even there Your hand will guide me; Your right hand will hold me fast.

David tries to find a place God is not, and picks the farthest edge of the map. Even there, a hand to guide and a hand to hold.

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, for God has said: “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.”

A verse about money that ends with the strongest never in the New Testament. The quotation reaches back to what God told Israel through Moses and Joshua, and the writer means it for every believer since.

The LORD your God is among you; He is mighty to save. He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you with His love; He will rejoice over you with singing.

A prophet of judgment ends with a song. God is not merely present; He is glad, quiet, and singing, which is more than most lonely people would dare to ask.

Look, an hour is coming and has already come when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and you will leave Me all alone. Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.

Jesus, hours before His arrest, telling His friends they will all run. He knows He is about to be left, and He names the one presence that will remain.

Look to my right and see; no one attends to me. There is no refuge for me; no one cares for my soul. I cry to You, O LORD: “You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.”

The heading places David in a cave, hiding from Saul. No one cares for my soul is the lowest point in the psalm, and the very next line is I cry to You, which is the whole method.