Loneliness is pervasive. We may experience periods when, even if surrounded by people, our insides yearn for something beyond the emptiness we may feel. We are called to find the answer within ourselves, loving and connecting with our core. We are called towards fullness and wholeness as we orient ourselves towards our own unique spirituality. This Sunday, we explore escaping loneliness and fostering healing as we first turn inward, cultivating the strength to turn outward.

They were a suffering people, and they were a determined people. They were a people in bondage, and they were a people of faith. The Israelites lived a life of enslavement to the Egyptians, and yet what we celebrate today is their journey towards freedom. We celebrate their commitment to that which was much bigger than their individual selves – their God and their community and their faith. Their commitment to a better life. We celebrate their exodus – the flight of the Hebrew slaves, a people who freed themselves from bondage and created a nation.

I wonder about those pieces of identity that can’t be a part of a physical mosaic but that nonetheless work to create who we are as a faith – a wealth of religious backgrounds or no religious background, a tapestry of theologies, a patchwork of needs, desires, and expectations, a vibrant bouquet of races, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, physical abilities, state of mental well-being, addicted or sober – here and held firmly together by covenant – by that hardy, dependable, stable grout. In this way, when we commit to our faith, when we commit to this church, we commit to the interconnectedness of it all.