For those of us whose formal introduction to Jesus was muddled and mishandled, whose hearts and minds and bodies have held onto the terror of the threat rather than the loveliness of the shelter we sought, who continue to struggle to connect to the love that our God professes for us – a prayer:

0ur friends did not need my thoughts or advice. There were professionals in their lives better equipped than I to provide that. What they needed was a safe place with faithful friends where they knew they were heard, appreciated, and cared for. They needed the gift of grace called listening.

Our aim is to locate Jesus as our compass, for those who feel lament and protest on the one hand, relief and joy on the other, and for those who are anxious and worn out on all sides, who just want to say “F” the world.

Nearly everyone attending disliked Paul. As one said so plainly:

I can hear Jesus as gentle even when I don’t know what to make of him. But I have a hard time hearing Paul as gentle or anything other than a religious man who is harsh and arrogant.

Most nodded their heads in agreement with this perspective. Each had a story of pain to tell.

Each Christmas season, Jesus-followers reacquaint themselves with Mary’s song (Lk. 1:46-55) Reading her lyrics, a question nags at me.

If powerful men wrote the Bible to leverage and preserve their own power, can you agree they weren’t smart and did a poor job?

Having recently encouraged a friend to keep coming to church and to continue asking his questions, it was this question that he posed with some disquiet. And understandably so.

Two months post-wedding, I said to Denis, “If I was a boy, I’d be you up!” The door slammed behind me.

We watched married couples and witnessed public demonstrations of affection as they sat together in their pews on Sunday morning. No one ever admitted having trouble, or that life could be thorny and complicated. Marriage looked easy for everyone except us.

When one who has hurt us gets hurt, foolish and scoffing voices cheer us on. “Hover over your fallen enemy! Fist-thump your chest and boot-heal theirs! Your sentences are saws. Go slow with the cutting!” Naïve wisdom shudders. “No, no, we have no enemies” it urges us. “All is well!”

The wise say “no” to both ways. But Why?

Someone wrote to me about their deconstructing and how they are thinking of risking again:

“It is so hard to feel understood by those without a similar past but also by people who have the same past but hold different beliefs than I do currently. There is lots of hiding and lots of fear.”

In response, as I’ll often do, I wrote this prayer: