The Porch Light I Still Flip On at Nine Every Night for No One Coming Home
The Porch Light I Still Flip On at Nine Every Night for No One Coming Home
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 15, 2026
My wife has been gone three years now, and I still reach for the porch light switch every night around nine, the same time I used to flip it on so she could see the steps coming up from her shift at the hospital. There is no one coming up those steps anymore. My son lives two states away and calls on Sundays if he remembers, which is most Sundays, and I am grateful for that, but Sunday is not every night, and nine o'clock is not Sunday. I flip the switch anyway. I have told myself it is for safety, in case a neighbor needs to see the house number, but I know better. I am still lighting a porch for somebody who is not walking up to it, because some old habit in me has not caught up yet to how empty the house actually is.
I am twelve years sober, and for most of those years I measured loneliness the way I measured everything else, by whether anyone was physically in the room with me. If people were around, I told myself I could not possibly be lonely, and if I felt that ache anyway I assumed something was wrong with me rather than with the definition I was using. What that porch light has taught me is that a man can be surrounded at church, at work, at his own kitchen table, and still carry a loneliness that has nothing to do with how many people are nearby and everything to do with how long it has been since he let anyone, including God, see him clearly.
Scripture does not treat that kind of loneliness as something only unusual men suffer. David wrote from inside it plainly, not performing composure for anyone reading over his shoulder. "Turn Yourself to me, and have mercy on me, For I am desolate and afflicted. The troubles of my heart have enlarged; Bring me out of my distresses!" (Psalm 25:16-17, NKJV). Desolate. He did not soften the word for the psalm's sake, and I have stopped trying to soften it for mine. Some nights the house really is that quiet, and pretending otherwise to myself has never once made it less true.
Here is where my own reasoning has never gotten me off that porch any faster. I can tell myself accurately that plenty of people have it worse, that I have a son who loves me and a church family who would come if I called, that loneliness at my age is ordinary and nothing to dramatize. Every sentence is true, and none of it has ever once filled the particular quiet of nine o'clock, because loneliness was never a math problem solved by comparing my situation to someone else's. It is an ache in a specific hour of a specific day, and it does not negotiate with statistics.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that twelve years of staying busy never could. Jesus told His disciples the night before He left them that He was not going to leave them the way the world leaves people, grieving and unanswered. "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you" (John 14:18, NKJV). Orphans. That is the precise word for how loneliness feels at its worst, like being left to figure out the house alone, and He named it only to tell me it is not actually my condition. David asked a harder question than mine in Psalm 139 and found there was no answer that left him alone. "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me" (Psalm 139:7-10, NKJV). There is no porch dark enough, no house quiet enough, to put me somewhere that hand is not already holding.
Moses told Joshua the same thing he had told an entire frightened nation standing at the edge of a land they had no guarantee of surviving. "Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you" (Deuteronomy 31:6, NKJV). The writer of Hebrews quotes that same promise centuries later to men who had lost everything they owned for following Christ, as if God wanted it repeated until it finally stuck. "For He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you'" (Hebrews 13:5, NKJV). Paul could not find a single thing, in heaven, in death, in any power named or unnamed, able to pry that promise loose. "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39, NKJV).
I flipped the porch light on again tonight, and this time I let myself sit on the step under it instead of going back inside right away. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which light you keep flipping on for someone who is not coming up the walk, which quiet hour finds you convinced no one notices you are there. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on anyone else walking through that door, and He has told you Himself what He does with the ones He loves. "He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing" (Zephaniah 3:17, NKJV). He will never leave you sitting on that step alone.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Psalm 25:16-17; John 14:18; Psalm 139:7-10; Deuteronomy 31:6; Hebrews 13:5; Romans 8:38-39; Zephaniah 3:17.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 15, 2026
My wife has been gone three years now, and I still reach for the porch light switch every night around nine, the same time I used to flip it on so she could see the steps coming up from her shift at the hospital. There is no one coming up those steps anymore. My son lives two states away and calls on Sundays if he remembers, which is most Sundays, and I am grateful for that, but Sunday is not every night, and nine o'clock is not Sunday. I flip the switch anyway. I have told myself it is for safety, in case a neighbor needs to see the house number, but I know better. I am still lighting a porch for somebody who is not walking up to it, because some old habit in me has not caught up yet to how empty the house actually is.
I am twelve years sober, and for most of those years I measured loneliness the way I measured everything else, by whether anyone was physically in the room with me. If people were around, I told myself I could not possibly be lonely, and if I felt that ache anyway I assumed something was wrong with me rather than with the definition I was using. What that porch light has taught me is that a man can be surrounded at church, at work, at his own kitchen table, and still carry a loneliness that has nothing to do with how many people are nearby and everything to do with how long it has been since he let anyone, including God, see him clearly.
Scripture does not treat that kind of loneliness as something only unusual men suffer. David wrote from inside it plainly, not performing composure for anyone reading over his shoulder. "Turn Yourself to me, and have mercy on me, For I am desolate and afflicted. The troubles of my heart have enlarged; Bring me out of my distresses!" (Psalm 25:16-17, NKJV). Desolate. He did not soften the word for the psalm's sake, and I have stopped trying to soften it for mine. Some nights the house really is that quiet, and pretending otherwise to myself has never once made it less true.
Here is where my own reasoning has never gotten me off that porch any faster. I can tell myself accurately that plenty of people have it worse, that I have a son who loves me and a church family who would come if I called, that loneliness at my age is ordinary and nothing to dramatize. Every sentence is true, and none of it has ever once filled the particular quiet of nine o'clock, because loneliness was never a math problem solved by comparing my situation to someone else's. It is an ache in a specific hour of a specific day, and it does not negotiate with statistics.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that twelve years of staying busy never could. Jesus told His disciples the night before He left them that He was not going to leave them the way the world leaves people, grieving and unanswered. "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you" (John 14:18, NKJV). Orphans. That is the precise word for how loneliness feels at its worst, like being left to figure out the house alone, and He named it only to tell me it is not actually my condition. David asked a harder question than mine in Psalm 139 and found there was no answer that left him alone. "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me" (Psalm 139:7-10, NKJV). There is no porch dark enough, no house quiet enough, to put me somewhere that hand is not already holding.
Moses told Joshua the same thing he had told an entire frightened nation standing at the edge of a land they had no guarantee of surviving. "Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you" (Deuteronomy 31:6, NKJV). The writer of Hebrews quotes that same promise centuries later to men who had lost everything they owned for following Christ, as if God wanted it repeated until it finally stuck. "For He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you'" (Hebrews 13:5, NKJV). Paul could not find a single thing, in heaven, in death, in any power named or unnamed, able to pry that promise loose. "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39, NKJV).
I flipped the porch light on again tonight, and this time I let myself sit on the step under it instead of going back inside right away. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which light you keep flipping on for someone who is not coming up the walk, which quiet hour finds you convinced no one notices you are there. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on anyone else walking through that door, and He has told you Himself what He does with the ones He loves. "He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing" (Zephaniah 3:17, NKJV). He will never leave you sitting on that step alone.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Psalm 25:16-17; John 14:18; Psalm 139:7-10; Deuteronomy 31:6; Hebrews 13:5; Romans 8:38-39; Zephaniah 3:17.
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