Religious (Not Crazy)

Blessed are the weak, the powerless, the outcast, the demoted—for theirs is the kingdom of God. This is the “backwards” gospel, the upside-down nature of God’s Kingdom that I love so much. The times in my life when everything has fallen apart and I’ve been hopelessly disillusioned, this is the only truth that saves me. Our weakness is God’s strength. When we are vulnerable, we are most likely to have eyes to see and ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church and to the world around us. Barbara Brown Taylor says that these thorns in our flesh are “how God defends us from . . .stainless steel Christians who want to cleans the church of problematic people.” My weakness is temper tantrums. When things don’t go my way, I turn into an adult-sized toddler. I was in Montreal on my way back from vacation earlier this week. I was happy, relaxed, content—I had just been on vacation! They made us de-plane in order to go through border control (which we then had to repeat