"I alone am left"

except for those 7,000 others...

One of the hardest feelings in the world is that of being alone, and it’s an experience that I’ve heard many people share in recent years. People who have been faithful, who want to do the right thing, but somehow end up feeling utterly alone. I’ve known this feeling many times myself and in some of my hardest moments, a scene from The Return of the King has often resurfaced for me, when the pitiful character Gollum narrates his back story and at one point he says with anguish in his voice, “We wept, Precious. We wept to be so alone.” That line shoots daggers in my heart every time I hear it or remember it.

I was reminded of this recently while reading the story of Elijah in 1 Kings. After his victorious showdown with the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18, his story takes a sharp turn. Chapter 19 starts with a death threat from the queen, and he flees to the wilderness for his life. Elijah meets with God at the top of Mount Horeb, God asks him why he is there, and Elijah’s response burns with hurt and bitterness—he’s been zealous, he’s been faithful, and here he is now, desperate and hopeless! “I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away,” he says to the God who just performed breathtaking miracles and fed him through angels in the last few days.

So many of us resonate with those words, “I alone am left!”

We feel alone, like we don’t fit any more in the spaces that we once called home.

We feel betrayed by the leaders and the people that we called brothers and sisters and “did life with.”

“I alone am left,” we cry. We weep to be so alone.

Photo by Mariano Baraldi on Unsplash

But there is hope in this story of Elijah’s loneliness. In that moment, God could have responded to Elijah in many ways. He could have reprimanded him for not trusting, he could have reminded him of all of the mighty deeds that Elijah had just witnessed. But instead, God calmly gave Elijah his instructions for next steps, which included anointing an apprentice for him, another prophet to share the work. God went even further, saying, “Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”¹

Did you catch that? Even though he didn’t say the words explicitly, God was telling Elijah, “Even though you feel like you are the only faithful person left, I am telling you that you are not alone.” When Elijah came to God in despair, when he was so distraught that a few verses before he begged God to take his life, God responded by assuring him that he was not alone.

We are not alone.

Friend, you are also not alone. We are not alone. Just like Elijah didn’t know about the faithful apprentice that he was about to meet or the 7,000 faithful people that he would likely never meet, we can trust that God has faithful people who are listening to his voice all around the world today.

Last week I was on a Zoom call with the launch team for Kat Armstrong’s new Bible studies,² where we talked a bit about Elijah. In discussing this chapter in 1 Kings, the hosts Kristel Acevedo and Kat Armstrong spoke about how times in the wilderness/desert are not times that we seek out or that we want to happen to us, but they can be a kindness and a gift as God builds our “spiritual muscles” not through our own strength but through his—through recognizing that “spiritual strength is surrender.”³

The previous week the discussion was with Dr. Carmen Imes, who reminded us that deserts don’t last forever, and that God has gifts for us in these spaces. Dr. Imes made the observation that we often struggle with liminality, and that sometimes we would prefer to return to something awful, rather than stay and endure the awkwardness of being in a liminal space, where we aren’t sure where we’re headed or what will come next. But the beauty of those spaces is that when we run out of our own answers, we can find freedom in surrendering to God and trusting him to provide, even when that feels impossible.⁴

Right now I am trying to trust that God will provide, not just the physical needs of our bodies but also the mental, spiritual, and emotional needs for human connection in a deeply divided time. I am trying to trust that when I look around me at the horrific silence about ever-escalating acts of injustice and evil happening in our own country, I am not alone. Even when it feels like it.

And I have found moments that give me glimmers of hope and bolster that trust—because of you, dear reader, and others that I have found in spaces like this online. Because of the precious people in my local circle who are willing to have hard conversations and sit with me in prayer. I don’t have all of the answers about how to navigate this time, but I have to believe that there is a path forward together.

Again and again, I read from historians and experts that the classic playbook of authoritarians is to divide people and pit them against each other. Again and again, I hear the advice that the only way that we are going to survive these infuriatingly “unprecedented” times is through authentic and loving community. It is tempting in times like this to get quiet, to bury our heads in the sand, and to withdraw, but may we instead find the courage to reach out, to find others who are seeking the narrow way of Jesus, and encourage each other to keep pressing on when we’d rather sit in the wilderness and feel sorry for ourselves. We are not alone. I’d venture to say that there are even more than 7,000 of us. Let’s keep finding each other. Let’s keep shining. 🕯️

1. 1 Kings 19:18

2. Gardens and Deserts, coming on July 8th but available for preorder now!

3. Quote from Kristel Acevedo on the 6/27/2025 Zoom call.

4. Paragraph of comments from Dr. Carmen Imes on 6/20/2025 Zoom call.