Thinking of Nancy

This past week the Living the Questions group at our church finished a study on the Bible and homosexuality. It had been 20 years since we last did a study on this issue. Several people in the group have family members who are gay or lesbian and a number of us have gay friends. After our first meeting, one of the group members brought a friend who belongs to another church but often attends one of our women's groups. Halfway through our session this friend, I'll call her Nancy, felt comfortable enough with us to share that she is a lesbian. She told us that she was approached by some fellow church members about becoming a deacon in their church. She felt she had to turn this down because her church does not allow homosexuals to be deacons. Nancy said that she hadn't done anything but that she is not considered good enough simply because of who she is. This is very painful for her since she feels called to serve and would very much like to serve her church. Over the weeks, this painful subject came up over and over. Nancy's input gave our discussions a whole new perspective and we appreciated her candor. She related a meeting with a GLBT group (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) where a woman exclaimed with tears of joy, "God loves me!" Nancy realized that this was the first time in this woman's 50+ years of life that she had felt this way. How sad. Perhaps those of us who profess to be followers of Jesus need to work a bit harder at emulating his love rather than trying to judge our fellow human beings.