I go to church every single week and I still feel lonely there. Is that normal, or is something wrong with me?

“When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.”

The psalmist is far from the temple and badly depressed, and what surfaces is the memory of walking into worship surrounded by a crowd. He is remembering the gathering while feeling nothing like it now. The psalm is honest in a way religious talk often is not: it puts the sound of a full congregation and the taste of loneliness into the same breath, and treats neither as a failure.

“And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.”

A man had been lying beside a pool in Jerusalem for thirty eight years, surrounded by crowds, in the one place people came specifically for help. When Jesus asks what he wants, the answer is about having nobody. He was not short of people. He was short of one person who would notice him. Jesus goes to him directly, which is the detail John clearly wants you to keep.