LOVE

Conditional love can take all the starch out of a person. It dissolves the very skeleton that frames you, holds you upright, and structures your being. It leaves you slumping, a formless puddle of who you were meant to be, with all the pieces there but no scaffold on which to build a life.

Of course, gays aren’t the only ones who experience conditional love. But it is a special kind of hell to be rejected by the people who created you and brought you into this world. To be ostracized and told to leave your home, not because of something you did, but because of who you are. That fractured love becomes internalized as shame—the belief that we are something wrong, not that we have done something wrong. The impact of this is shown in the data: each year, 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously consider suicide, and 20% of transgender and non-binary youth attempt it.

Have they not heard the Good News? That Love became incarnate in a humble baby, born in a manger to live among us. This Love grew and spoke. It challenged interpretations of the law that did not give life and told the sinless to cast the first stone. This Love rebuked those who saw the speck in their neighbor’s eye but ignored the log in their own. It healed and restored wholeness, and declared the greatest commandment to be LOVE.

This bold, true Love so rattled people that it was crucified in order to silence it. But Love, being unstoppable, pulsed back to life three days later.

Love then appeared to its friends and commanded them to go and be LOVE to the world.

My LGBTQ darlings, you are loved. You are part of the family of Love. You are claimed by Love. The very source of your being is Love. Hallelujah! Go now and share the Good News: Love wins.