Link Love + Thankful for all the places that brought me here

Why I'm equally as thankful for the charismatics as for the Calvinists

I have learned to be thankful for the fundamentalists, with whom I was raised, for teaching me everything we do has consequences, even if the consequences are not quite the fiery pit of hell bad Christian movies told me it was.

I have learned to be thankful for the charismatics, with whom I spent my twenties, for teaching me we don't have to just accept what is done, but we can engage and converse and wrestle with God over the outcome.

I have learned to be thankful for the Calvinists, with whom I spent the first half of my thirties, for teaching me that it is possible to accept all of it as already done, to make peace with what didn’t go my way, and trust there was good to be found in most of it anyway.

I have learned to be thankful for the Liturgists, with whom I spent the second half of my thirties, for teaching me it is God who never changes, but within God and God’s frame, we are always changing, growing, clinging as a vine to the eternal trellis of who God is.

I have learned to be thankful for the churchlessness of the first half of my forties, for teaching me that Jesus isn't confined to a denomination or church, that Jesus is the center of my life and my life is better, safer, more gracious and loving, centered and content when I orient it around him and not any particular church or institution.

And I have learned to be thankful for the places I find myself and will find myself, among the Anabaptists with whom I worship now, and wherever I am in the future, for teaching me everything I will need to know in order to be a still becoming and forming person.

I am thankful to have learned to not despise the former me or the places I found love, acceptance, learning, formation, and being. We are not meant to stay in any place forever, and if we do, we will begin to deform, to twist what is true and good and beautiful into something crusty, stagnant, even gaudy, judgmental of those who do not share our current beliefs or practices. We might find them beautiful, compelling, and the best place for us in that season, but someone else may be finding Christ elsewhere, for, as the poet Hopkins wrote, “Christ plays in ten-thousand places,” and as Christ himself said, “Where two or three gather in my name, there I am.”

Below is Link Love, a mostly bi-weekly offering of things I’ve read, watched, listened to, or loved lately. It’s been a month so there’s a lot down there below the paywall!