Finding Peace and Community in Life's Storms

When the winds rage and the waves crash around us. Yes. Thank you, Mikey. When fear grips our hearts and faith begins to falter. Jesus, who calms the storm, speaks peace over chaos. We trust his voice and rest in his power. Amen. [00:13:33]

But storms aren't always about rain and waves. Sometimes we find ourselves feeling very alone in what we'll call the storms of life. There are so many hardships we face where we can feel isolated. It might be the loss of a loved one or a health crisis, a divorce, or a financial hardship. [00:42:43]

Today, I also am especially thinking of our friends and our loved ones. I'm so glad that we're all here. I'm so glad that we're all here. our friends who are with us online we know that some of our friends join us online because it's convenient but sometimes and sometimes the alarm just goes off too late right or we hit snooze or sometimes we're out of town but some of our friends that join us online have chronic conditions that mean they can't leave the house or it's difficult to leave the house some of our friends are online because they're just checking us out and they're doing that oftentimes because something has happened in their life some sort of storm where they're seeking community so whether in person or online going through a storm can feel like there's nobody who really understands you might feel lost or afraid or without hope and you might have a hard time connecting with others this can cause you just to feel completely alone in the midst of a storm so today we're starting a new sermon series in case you couldn't tell by the bulletin cover it's called you are not alone and we're going to be talking about all of the ways that we experience loneliness in life i want to give a quick call out to the adult formation committee who hosted a kaleidoscope last fall on this topic of loneliness and it got my juices flowing thinking like that's actually like a topic that we need to talk about and dive into so thank you who's on the adult formation team nobody wants to admit it thank you maryann yes chad bruce all the others thank you for being on that team and doing high quality ways for us to grow in our faith so anyway i thought this topic was so great that i then kind of put together a plan and when i was with the worship team and they said that would be really good in january when everybody's very depressed and it's not sunny out and so thank you worship team where are you all michelle yep there's okay there we go yes so thank the thank these teams for inspiring this series hopefully it'll be good but loneliness is more than just weather related, you know, the sun not showing, shining. [00:43:19]

isolation and loneliness have become a major problem, so much so that in 2023 the U .S. Surgeon General declared isolation and loneliness to be a public health endemic. Sit with that. I mean, that's like the sort of warning that we hear about cigarette smoking, right? That isolation and loneliness are a public health endemic. [00:45:55]

Loneliness is a complex emotional experience where you feel disconnected or isolated as... It's as if you don't have any meaningful relationships. There's a... There's a... There's a... There's a... There's a... There's a... There's a... There's a... There's a... There's a sense that you feel like you're on your own, even if you're surrounded by hundreds of people. So, today I... There's a study that show... Showed in October that 20 % to 33 % of adults experience loneliness on a daily basis. I want you to look around, you probably have three to five people in your pew. [00:47:07]

So even if we're on our own boat in the storm, there's a little bit of comfort knowing that there's other boats around us also struggling in that storm, right? There's a little comfort knowing that 20 % to 33 % of us are feeling the same kind of loneliness. [00:47:56]

When things go wrong in our life, one of the things that often comes to our lips is a question like, where is God? Has God abandoned me? Where is God in my distress? And these cries are familiar in the storm of life because we feel like God doesn't have a presence with us or God doesn't have a presence with us. God doesn't care. [00:48:34]

In the Christian tradition, sometimes we call the storms of life, I love, I can't remember what kids said, something about a dark night, but in a Christian tradition, sometimes we call it the dark night of the soul. St. John of the Cross was a Spanish poet and priest who coined that term. He was an early leader in reforming the church, to do more contemplative practices. [00:51:00]

For nine months he had to live in a windowless monastery monastery cell where he was beaten and starved and kept in isolation and so he later called that storm a dark night of the soul because during that time he actually felt like God was absent from him. Asleep at the stern of the ship and this absence left his soul in what he called utter desolation. [00:51:40]

Yet as John reflected on that experience those nine months he found a deeper transformative union between the two of them. He found a deeper communion with God during that time. He was able to look back and see God's presence. He ended up actually during that time he wrote some of his most beautiful and mystical poetry that describes how through suffering the soul is drawn closer to God, closer to divine love. [00:52:10]

Stephanie said that for 15 years, she lived a life with her hatches battened down. Lonely. She was so used to sailing that way that even when there were no storms, she didn't know how to do anything else. But eventually she realized that Jesus had quelled the storms in her life. She had remarried, and as I said, she had a great career. [00:54:49]

Friends, if you're facing a storm right now, remember this. You are not alone. God is with you. I am with you, drawing you closer, closer to God's self and closer, I hope, into this community of faith. If you're struggling with a new diagnosis of some kind, there's probably someone in this room that may have had a similar diagnosis. If it's a divorce, there's probably someone in this room. [00:55:17]