A Generous Spaciousness
Today, reflect on these words from a Christian leader who has experienced tons of ‘othering’ and yet has come out on the other side of it with an expansive graciousness. Listen for how God might speak to you through her today:
The world I live in is chaotic, uncertain, messy, complex. The world I live in will not tolerate the luxury of the theoretical where the Bible gives the principle and you just need to follow. The world I live in demands that you think and rethink and question and yes, even doubt. The world I live in rages in the face of sanitized faith and challenges foundational paradigms that used to lull me through the inevitable paradoxes of life. The world I live in has erased the lines drawn between sacred and secular, saved and lost, sinner and saint. The world I live in is composing a magnum opus to the heart-stopping, outrageously unbelievable unconditional love and acceptance of God that crushes and demolishes the vestiges of self-righteous “us and them.”
It’s a scary world sometimes. It is a wild and risky place. It is a place that invites, yes even insists, on a free-fall into the mercy of God where there are no favorites, where the slackers get the same wage as the keeners, where dignified fathers hike up their robes and haul butt off the porch to meet excrement encrusted losers . . . with no “but” in sight. And it makes us nervous . . . because it seems too good to be true. We somehow want God to be wrathful—because that makes sense to us. We somehow want to hear the boundaries on what makes a “real Christian” because that allows us some tangible security. And we want to know who is “in” and who is “out.” We want to know who is “right” and who is “wrong.” We want to know, “Are you on our team? Or aren’t you?” And I feel like I’m walking the precipice with no safety net saying, “Those are the wrong questions.” To me, the questions are, “How are you loving people?” “How are you serving people?” “How are you trusting God to do his work in people’s hearts, in his time, in his way?”
- Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church, Wendy VanderWal-Gritter