Terumah: Do You Feel Lonely?

Description

Do you ever feel lonesome? Utterly alone? With no one to turn to and no one able to understand you?

Poets and singers capture the feelings of isolation that resonates with so many of us. Their solution however often makes us feel more lonely than ever. Billy Joel sings: “They’re sharing a drink they call loneliness. But it’s better than drinkin’ alone.” And if that’s not enough, Leonard Cohen, in his inimitable depressing manner, puts it this way: “Ah baby, let’s get married, we’ve been alone too long. Let’s be alone together.”

Loneliness – existential loneliness – is one of the most difficult challenges in life? But join the club. Discover the surprising company that loneliness shares. And what you can do to find comfort in a desolate world.

In this week’s Torah reading, God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites: “Build for Me a Sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.”

Until this command was issued from above, we would never have thought that God needed a home, a place of belonging, a place of rest. Houses/shelters are for mortals. Why would an infinite God need such a thing?

Simply put, God wanted a home so that He could stay among people! Until the Sanctuary was built, God was (in effect) homeless and lonely!

How we can say that God is lonely? This sermons takes us the subject of God’s loneliness and what it can teach us about our own.