Missy Joyce

“Jesus is like us in every respect.
Don’t brush this sentence off casually. Let it sink in, deep to the core of who you are. God is like us in every respect. He is like the transgender woman who is worried she’ll be murdered while walking to her car after work. He is like the broken-hearted gay man who can’t attend the church of his childhood. He is like the bisexual intersex person who doesn’t conform to gender norms and endures the snide looks and sniggers of strangers. He is like these people just as much as the heterosexual man who is comfortable performing his gender in a way this society finds acceptable.”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Where True Love Is: An Affirming Devotional for LGBTQI+ Individuals and Their Allies

“I don’t have all the answers. More than that, I don’t even know half the questions. But I can rest in the fact that God has both.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“All of us, minus the part of us we wish to keep for ourselves, adds up to none of us. And that’s typically what we give God.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“In truth, Thomas was being a faithful disciple of Jesus, who warned His disciples that “many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah!’ and they will lead many astray” (Matt. 24:5). Indeed, Jesus affirms those who believe without seeing because such belief takes great faith. But that in no way suggests we should ignore evidence when it is available, as though doing so makes us more faithful. This impulse, combined with an often uncritical biblicism, not only neglects God’s command to love him with our minds, but leads us into unnecessary divisiveness and shallow literalism that blinds us to the deeper truth of Scripture. Therefore, during this process of self-emptying, we must be aware of and honest with our uncertainties. While we should never throw around our doubt with rebellious defiance, neither should we view our genuine questions and uncertainties as liabilities. Sometimes allowing ourselves to question deeply held beliefs opens us up to discovering that we were, in fact, in error, offering us the opportunity for more faithful understanding. Other times we discover that our fears are unfounded, returning to our former beliefs without doubt, yet stronger for it.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci, Vulnerable Faith: Missional Living in the Radical Way of St. Patrick