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A Peace That Transcends The WORLD

Queer folk: Not everyone will accept you when you come out. Some, including family, might never accept you. They might reject and expel you. As stark and gut-wrenching as that reality is, when you’re ready, come out anyway. Others will love you, make space for you, and let you know that you belong.

Peace is the exception, not the rule. You will notice peace more—and be grateful for even short intervals of it—if you understand this. Peace is like a completely sunny day in the Pacific Northwest in February: rare, but noteworthy and worth dropping everything for, even for a few minutes.

Queer folk: There is good news! You are loved. There is nothing about you that is unlovely. If you don’t know that, you can learn it. God has not and will not abandon you. Ever.

There is a peace which passes understanding. God’s Peace came and lived among us to show us the way. It was not a conflict-free peace; it was not a precious, Hallmark-card peace. It was an honest peace—the peace of truth and the peace of life—the peace that binds us to our Creator.

This is the kind of peace described in Romans 8:35, 37-39:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”

Light a second candle: you belong!