On the teeter-totter of the holiday calendar, we are smack in between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Southwestern Colorado is sunny with intermittent snow. Oslo is dark and wet. Recently, Kevin I spent nine days in Norway, visiting our son and his family. My flashlight came in handy, since the eight-hour time change awakened me four nights straight at two am. Initially I wondered what to do in the world’s darkest hours while everyone else was asleep. Thankfully, I had the opportunity to share another woman’s journey; one that resembled my own in our pain and angst over differences with the Evangelical Church. I read Searching For Sunday by the late Rachel Held Evans.
Rachel Held Evans* in Searching For Sunday
She was, as she described it, “a millenial with one foot in Gen X.” Born in 1981, she was 25 years younger than I, and almost the same age my daughter would have been. Our upbringings were wildly dissimilar. If Trump had not been elected President by the support of the Religious Right, I probably would never have heard of her. But as her story spilled out in the light from my tablet, illuminating those dark Norwegian nights, her pain of estrangement from the Evangelical Church mirrored my own. Her quest for answers from the church’s benevolent powers-that-be returned the same results. She had walked ahead of me down the road in search of solutions, and what she found will serve as a guide for what I attempt. Were we to sit down to coffee, I’m sure there are points on which we would have disagreed. But I am profoundly grateful to this woman I won’t meet until Heaven.
Going Public as The Christian Resistance
As I shared in a previous post, I waited over two years from the inauguration before I figured out that the Religious Right would continue to support Trump, no matter what he does. My greatest distress is knowing that many non-believers think all Christians endorse this president. I cannot imagine a worse impression. Neither can I, in good conscience, do nothing. In September I joined the Resistance by launching this website. I have begun to pray about how to counteract this misconception on a local level, but at this point, difficulties abound.
I love church life. Having been raised by crazy people, I first found love and acceptance in the embrace of the Evangelicals. I also love my local church. Most of these folks are pretty taken with Trump, and the ones who aren’t don’t share their opinions openly. Just so there were no misunderstandings, I have been open about my leanings as well as my mission. And as I’ve shared before, almost everyone has accepted me with open arms. I don’t want to do anything to hurt them. Yet, I feel compelled to act on a local level, which means going public in a small town where everybody knows somebody who knows their everybodys. This action carries real consequences. Fortunately, I know more than to “look before I leap.” I have a go-to course of action that has served as my path for decision-making ever since I worked through the study Experiencing God, more than twenty years ago.
Experiencing God
For as long as it takes, I will pray. I will continue my annual walk through the Gospels, this time in the Daily Bible chronological format. I will listen. As Henry Blackaby wrote in Experiencing God, our Lord “speaks through the Bible, prayers, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways.” Never has there been a time I have found this to be untrue. The only caveat may lie in the timing, because it doesn’t specify how long this process might take. That’s okay, though. I will continue to write, and the only place I might be going is Heaven. And in that case, problem solved.
Here on Earth, there’s no place like Norway for getting away from it all (except maybe for the Norwegians). God always knows what I need better than I do. When “He makes me lie down in green pastures,” I never quite know where those pastures might be. Oslo at two in the morning in November was neither green nor grassy. But the place, the time, and the guide were the perfect combination to provide rest, encouragement, and perspective. I don’t know what the Lord will bring in terms of my next assignment. But considering how He works, I’m looking forward to that moment; one that illuminates possibilities I could never have imagined. And it will be just the right idea, at just the right time. That is the God I have come to know.
© Rachel Ophoff, Coconut Mountain Communications LLC, 2019. All Rights Reserved.
*Rachel Held Evans passed away on May 4, 2019, due to complications from medical treatment for an infection.
1 Psalm 23: 1-2, King James Version (KJV) Public Domain