Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

— Matthew 22:37-40

Christianity is in a time of crisis, and the LGBTQ+ community is suffering more and more because of it. We aren’t even allowed to be talked about in some schools. Books about us are banned from schools and libraries. When I hear someone say they are a Christian, I, sadly, have a visceral reaction and often equate it with homophobia and bigotry. Too many Christians, and especially the current Protestant leaders, are duplicitous, hypocritical bigots who do everything but follow the teachings of Christ. They wrap their words in biblical language while preaching hate and fear. They are the furthest from Christ’s teachings as they can be, yet they hide behind a cross. They are a disgrace to Christianity, and they are rejecting the teachings of Jesus for their own distorted and hate-filled beliefs. Jesus’s teachings can be summed up in two words: love and acceptance. Jesus’s love and acceptance are unconditional, yet for many Christians, it is very conditional. If you do not live by the hateful words spewed by Christian leaders, then you are rejected by their congregations. They may even claim they are accepting and affirming to all people, but they are only accepting and affirming on the condition that you follow their beliefs that have no basis in the teachings of Christ as seen in the Bible. When we look at the megachurches in the United States, you see ministers doing everything they can to get more and more people into their churches, but it’s not to grow Christianity and make the world a better place, it is so they can feed their greed for money and have control over people. It’s not about Christianity; it’s a power trip.

The need to control others leads to attempting to mold people into someone they are not. They want to preach the teachings of men and not the teachings of the Bible. God, who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, created all things and knows all that has been and will ever be. Revelation 1:8 says, “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,’ says the Lord, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’” He created us in His image. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God, He created him; male and female He created them.” Therefore, how can someone hate another for the way they were born? When people in our lives want us to be something we are not and try to change who we are, then they fail as Christians. How can someone follow God and at the same time try to be God by molding someone into their distorted vision of who they should be? It is not possible because they are rejecting the belief that God created man in His image and that Jesus taught acceptance. When the scribes and Pharisees brought Jesus a woman caught in adultery and demanded that she be stoned, John 8:7 tells us that Jesus said, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”

Yet, Christians today have declared a crusade against the LGBTQ+ community. Are they all without sin? No, Romans 3:22-24 says, “For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Christ commands us not to judge others. In Matthew 7:1-2, Jesus preached, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” We must remember that nowhere, not a single time, is the LGBTQ+ community mentioned in the teachings of Christ. In the Old Testament, Leviticus 18:22 says, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.” Yet this rule is amid numerous other laws that Christians ignore and do not follow. Eating bacon is just as much an abomination as lying with another man. So, is eating shellfish, wearing two different types of fabric, etc. Jesus came to this earth to bring a New Covenant. If the LGBTQ+ community should be condemned, Jesus would have mentioned it. Yet, there is nowhere in the Bible where He does.

Being gay is an innate dimension of personality. For those of us who identify with the LGBTQ+ community, it is the way God made us in “His own image.” Sexual orientation was not even understood in biblical times. Yet, as stated before, God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. If He had felt that sexuality should be addressed, it would be mentioned in Jesus’s teachings. If you are like me and grew up in a rural area, you were not made aware of sexual diversity. Chasten Buttigieg, who I greatly admire and is the husband of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, described his struggles growing up gay in a small town:

“When I was growing up in conservative rural Michigan, I thought I was the only gay person in the world. I thought something was twisted and wrong with me. I thought something in my DNA was compromised, and I spent 18 years of my life hating this fact about me [but] when you embrace the qualities about yourself that make you weird or make you different or make you feel like you stand out from the crowd, you start to see what actually makes you truly powerful and unique and beautiful. [You see] you’re not defined by the opinions of other people.”

LGBTQ+ people were never discussed in my church. If they were discussed in other churches, it was to say they are an “abomination” and God is punishing them with AIDS. In fact, in all the years I attended church, only once did one of my preachers mention any LGBTQ+ issues, and that was after the Supreme Court handed down the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized gay marriage. That Sunday, my preacher gave a sermon in which he used verses out of context and verses exclusively from the Old Testament to condemn gay people. I wish I’d been brave enough to either stand up and tell him how wrong he was or had simply walked out of the church. Instead, I left at the end of the service and never went back. It angered me so much because I was raised Church of Christ, which is a New Testament church. We follow the teachings of Jesus, not the laws of Judaism. We don’t have musical instruments in church services because it is not mentioned in the New Testament, but musical instruments are mentioned as being part of Jewish religious celebrations. This preacher abandoned the beliefs of my church to preach hate and to twist the words of the Bible. Twisting the Words of God and abandoning the New Testament is an abomination in the beliefs of the Churches of Christ. Yet, the Churches of Christ are not an affirming Christian denomination. They have abandoned the teachings of the founders of the Christian Restoration Movement to put forward their own hatred of all things different.

When I was younger, and something bad would happen to me, I always thought it was because God was punishing me for being gay. I would have some gay things that I’d acquired, and I’d get rid of all of it. I’d throw any toys, magazines, or books away. I’d delete anything gay on my computer. I’d even delete my profiles on dating sites and the phone numbers of people I knew who were gay. I’d get rid of it all and try to make myself believe it would get better. If I just did away with my gayness, God would not punish me, and life would get better. But you know what? It didn’t. Either these bad things were because I caused them or just bad luck. They were not God punishing me. It took me years of prayer, meditation, and research to understand that I could not change who I am. I could not change my sexuality. Enforced celibacy was not the answer either. It just made me feel guilty and like a failure when I had gay thoughts or gay encounters. We need to have the option to find love, and romantic love does include intimacy. 

I think one of the reasons I gained weight is because it made me undesirable to other men. It wasn’t until I began to accept and love myself that I quit this destructive behavior and quit trying to do away with my sexuality. Everything I tried to do to make myself “straight” caused more problems, greater depression, and destructive behavior like drugs or alcohol. I used to drink way too much, though it was never to the point of being an alcoholic, and I never abused drugs too badly, but that was more because it usually made my migraines worse. I still get migraines if I smell marijuana. Those times when I struggled most with the denial of my sexuality were the times when my migraines were their absolute worst. I prayed at times for God to let me die just so the pain would stop. That led to using more powerful painkillers that could melt away the pain for a little while, but that just caused overmedication migraines which became a vicious cycle. Before I could stop that type of behavior, I had to love myself and accept my sexuality. It was the only way to heal. I still have migraines but for other reasons, not because I am struggling with my sexuality.

One of the things I have always endeavored to do with my Sunday devotionals is to give people who are looking for answers on how to be a good Christian and a gay Christian a place where they are welcomed. I wanted those who were struggling to see that they are not alone. Growing up, I felt very alone, and I thought something must be wrong with me. It took me a long time to come to terms with my sexuality because it went against what I was taught by my parents and community. When I realized that I could not change who I was and that God made me the way I am, I dove into the Bible for answers. James Neil Hollingworth, better known by the pseudonym Ambrose Redmoon, said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” We must have the courage to believe in God’s Word. We need the courage to accept who we are. We need to fight for what is right and for the true message of Christianity. If we are Christians, we should not hate anyone, no matter what their beliefs are, but we can fight for what is right. James Baldwin is quoted as saying, “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” 

Too often throughout history, Christianity has been rooted in oppression and denial of the diversity of humanity and its right to exist. This is not God’s work. It is the work of evil and hatred. People who claim to be “Christian” yet are anything but completely reject Christ’s teachings in their everyday lives, and Christianity is shrinking because of the hatred it fuels. While Christians continue to make up a majority of the U.S. populace, their share of the adult population was 12 points lower in 2021 than it was in 2011. Currently, about three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) are religious “nones”—people who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics, or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religious identity. That number is nearly double what it was in 2007. Christians are driving people away from religion. In Acts 2:40, Peter said, “Be saved from this perverse generation.” Today, we need to be saved from the perversity of Christians who are rejecting Christ for their own greed, desire to control others, and hunger for power. If Christianity in the world today continues on this trajectory, the “nones” will continue to grow.

Those who are attacked for their sexuality by “Christians” too often end their own lives. They are made to feel so guilty for how they choose to follow God’s word and to embrace their sexuality because God created them with a different sexuality than the majority of people. We must learn to love ourselves. If those who say they love us reject us and make us feel shame because of our sexuality, they do not really love us. They are putting conditions on their love, and by doing so, they reject all the teachings of Christ. They are doing evil’s work, not the work of God. Evil is destroying Christianity, and instead of fighting for what is right, too many are leaving the religion, or they try to mold themselves into the image that “Christians” want and end up destroying their own lives. There will always be people who care about you, who love you, and who want the best for you. Reach out to that person or those people and let them help you accept you for who you are. A true friend will not judge you. They will do everything they can to help you, but you can’t be afraid to ask.

I leave you with this advice: Love who you are. Accept the person God created. Don’t be bullied by unchristian beliefs. Live your life in a way that makes Jesus proud. Spread God’s Word. Eschew hatred. Embrace LOVE and ACCEPTANCE. Seek out someone who truly loves you not for who they want you to be, but for who you are and the way God created you.

Salute one another with a holy kiss. The churches of Christ salute you.

— Romans 16:16

By now, those who read my Sunday religious posts probably know that I grew up and am a member of the Church of Christ. It is a faith that I adhere to, and I hope that it will someday follow the teachings of the Bible fully and openly accept LGBTQ+ Christians as members. Most Churches of Christ do not at this time, and I believe it is one of their greatest faults along with their prohibition on women in leadership roles. However, this is not the point of this post today. I wanted to talk about growing up in the Church of Christ in rural Alabama. I grew up in a small country church with around a dozen members, half of which were my family.

The Church of Christ is a simple church with a simple set of beliefs based on the New Testament of the Bible. The church teaches that the process of salvation is achieved through the following actions:

1. One must be taught appropriately and hear the Word of God.
   • How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things! But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So, then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:14-17)
2. One must believe or have faith.
   • But without faith, it is impossible to please him: for he that comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)
   • He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not shall be damned. (Mark 16:16)
3. One must repent, which means turning from one’s former lifestyle and choosing God’s ways.
   • And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commanded all men everywhere to repent. (Acts 17:30)
4. One must confess the belief that Jesus is the son of God.
   • And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, “See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?” And Philip said, “If thou believe with all thine heart, thou mayest.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” (Acts 8:36–37)
5. One must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
   • Then Peter said unto them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” (Acts 2:38)
6. One must live faithfully as a Christian. 
   • But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9)

I do my best to follow each of these daily. I also try to follow the Golden Rule: “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) Likewise, Luke 6:32 says, “And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.” I also follow the Greatest Commandment as given to us by Jesus in Matthew 22:37–40: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” I believe in the simplicity of love and faith to guide my Christian life.

I learned this in my little country church from the various preachers we had while growing up. In the earliest years of my life, we had two preachers that alternated every other week and preached at a second church. We had one preacher who was not kind to people who were not church members, like my mother, who was a Baptist. This preacher nearly tore the church apart before he was asked to leave. After that, I remember we got a young seminary student from Faulkner University (a Church of Christ university in Montgomery). I thought he was one of the most gorgeous men I have ever seen. He was so handsome and charismatic. I hung on his every word. It didn’t help that I was going through puberty at the time and had an erection at the drop of a hat. I always dreaded him finishing his sermons because it meant that I’d have to stand up and sing the song of invitation. I was always so embarrassed that I had an erection every time I had to stand up. Come to think of it today, while puberty may be to blame for part of that, carnal thoughts about the attractive young man who was our preacher probably had something to do with it as well, but I digress.

There were rarely any surprises at our church. Things ran relatively smoothly every Sunday to a particular routine. We all had our regular places to sit in church. My family sat on the left side of the church behind the song leader and his family. The song leader sat in the front pew, and his wife sat in the second. Behind his wife sat my parents and my sister. I usually sat in the fourth pew next to my grandmama and, before he died, my granddaddy. My aunt sat in the pew behind us. On the church’s right side, the preacher sat on the first pew, and his family sat on the second. Behind them was the lady for whom the church was built. Various neighbors of hers either filled the pew beside her or behind her. Her husband, who had donated the land and built the church, sat two rows behind her.

I mention the couple who was instrumental in building the church because when they got married and moved into the house, they would spend the rest of their lives in, the wife said, “Everything would be perfect if I had a church close by.” Even though her husband was a Methodist, he knew his wife valued her denomination and set out to find a church that needed a new home. He found one a few miles away and offered to donate land a build them a new church. The church accepted, and his wife had a church within walking distance to her house. It was a simple white church, initially just one room with outhouses behind the church and a fellowship table on the grounds surrounded by pine trees. As I got older, they expanded the church to include a Sunday school room and bathrooms, though the Sunday school room never saw any use as a classroom. That was my small church.

At age 13, I was baptized into the church along with my sister one Sunday night. At first, my duties at church became reading the lesson’s texts (sermon) that Sunday, much like I post a Bible verse at the beginning of each Sunday post. Soon, our song leader’s emphysema made it increasingly more challenging to lead the song worship, so I was asked to take over. I was maybe 14 or 15 when this happened. I remained the song leader until I graduated college and moved to Mississippi for graduate school. I was a terrible song leader. I could barely carry a tune, and I only knew about a dozen or so songs well enough to lead the song worship. Usually, I would start the song, and the lady the church had been built for would really lead the song worship. I always thought they should have just let her lead the singing instead of me. She was much better. She was also the de facto church leader, though no one would admit it. The men of the church would meet to make any decisions, but nothing would actually be done without her informal approval. She also prepared the Lord’s Supper (Communion) every week. I truly loved that woman; she was so sweet and so kind and loving. As she got older, she declared that it was too much for her to wear a dress every Sunday when she felt more comfortable in pants, and she never wore a skirt or dress again to church. She always wore pants. 

As the church grew larger, we eventually doubled in size. After I left for graduate school, we had a new church member take over as song leader. I had other duties in the weekly service, which I continued to do when I came home from Mississippi. I served communion alongside my father. Originally, my granddaddy and father served communion, but after my grandfather had a heart attack walking into church one Sunday morning, he rarely returned to church after that, claiming that he had bladder issues and did not want to disturb the service by getting up to use the bathroom. So, I took his place serving communion.

Our services were simple. Before the service started, we would usually catch up with each other, i.e., gossip, but it was never malicious gossip that I remember. At precisely 8:45 am each Sunday morning, the song leader would call our service to order, and we would sing two songs, usually the first and last verses of the song. We always remained seated for these first two songs. Then the service would be turned over to the preacher for the main prayer, although sometimes that honor would be offered to a special guest if we had one. After the prayer, the song leader would instruct us to stand. We would sing another song before the preacher would stand and make his way to the pulpit and give a sermon, usually lasting around 30-40 minutes. As he finished his sermon, he would call us to stand for the song of invitation as he stood at the front of the church to welcome anyone who wanted to join the church and be baptized. After the song of invitation, my father and I would stand and go to the communion table where my father would say a prayer before I would pass around the unleavened bread, which was the representation of the Body of Christ. After I had passed around the bread, I would return to the communion table and offer my father the bread, and we would eat the bread together. Then he said a prayer for the “fruit of the vine,” which represented Christ’s Blood, and I would pass it around just as I did for the bread. When I returned to the table, we also drank from the small communion cups that usually grape juice. (Occasionally, the woman who prepared the communion would run out of grape juice and substitute her homemade muscadine wine, much to everyone’s surprise. She never warned anyone ahead of time.) Then my father would hand me a wicker basket that had been with the church since its beginnings. (It was still stamped on the bottom with 5¢.) My father would return to his seat (I returned to my seat too before I became song leader), and I would call for any announcements. Then, we would stand again and sing the first verse of the closing song before my father gave the closing prayer.

After the service concluded, we would usually gather outside the church and socialize for a bit before we all headed home. Usually, my Sundays after that consisted of my mother cooking a large lunch, which she sometimes started before leaving for church. On special occasions, we would go out for lunch. Because we often got out of church by 10 am, we were fortunate to be able to eat lunch out at 11 am when the restaurants opened and before the “church crowds” arrived. We did have Sunday night services for a short time, but with such a small congregation, it was not worth it if only a few people attended. Eventually, we discontinued Sunday evening services. We never had Wednesday night services as many southern churches did because my family went to my grandparents’ house for supper on Wednesday nights. We also rarely had Sunday school, even though we eventually added a classroom to the building. We tried a few times, but it was never very successful.

It was a simple church with simple people who cared a great deal about one another. Most of the church members from my formative years have now passed on: the song leader, the couple who established the church, and my grandparents. My parents have moved away, as have my sister and I, so my aunt is the only family member to still attend the church. My sister even became a Baptist, much to my father’s horror. I think he took the fact that I was gay better than he took my sister becoming a Baptist. Ironically, my parents now attend a Baptist church. However, my mother claims that it’s Baptist in name only as it’s made up of community members where they currently live and comprised of people from many different Protestant denominations.

I don’t know if this description of my church upbringing is interesting to anyone, but because of the love amongst my church’s members, my primary philosophy of love and acceptance was formed, despite some of my parents’ more discriminatory beliefs. Except for the preacher who nearly broke up our church with his insistence that anyone who was not a member of the Church of Christ was going to hell, very little judgment was ever practiced within the church. I mentioned the incident a few weeks ago about the current preacher’s sermon on the evils of homosexuality and another sermon on gambling. Our preachers have always focused on being a better, more loving Christian, which was always most important to me.

Then in the audience of all the people he said unto his disciples, Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts; Which devour widows’ houses, and for a shew make long prayers: the same shall receive greater damnation.

Luke 20:45-47

On Friday, I wrote about my mother’s Southern Baptist pastor passing away from COVID-19, and I admitted that I have two prejudices: Republicans and Southern Baptists. Besides the unwelcoming nature of Southern Baptists, I thought I would explain why I think they are the modern-day equivalents of the scribes and the Pharisees that Jesus laments about several times in the Gospels. The Pharisees and scribes were upset because they believed the people were abandoning the purity of the covenant that Jews had made with God. They believed that Jews in the Roman Empire were being lax in their morality and in their obedience to the commandments of God. So, they sought to draw together and draw apart from the masses and to set a moral example. These were the conservatives of the day. They had a high system of honor and virtue, and they committed themselves to obeying God. Yet, they outwardly professed their faith the loudest, but they secretly did not follow their own beliefs and morals. They were hypocrtites.

Growing up in the South, the religious right was often centered around the Southern Baptists. They are the largest Protestant denomination, and they tend to be the loudest. Of course, there are other denominations that follow suit, but it is often the Southern Baptists that try to speak for all Protestants and condemn those who do not believe like they do. One reason for this is their seminaries and universities, and another reason is because of the press the annual Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) receives, especially when it comes to their views on the LGBTQ+ community.

In its history, the SBC has issued several resolutions in which it rejects homosexuality as a lifestyle and refers to it as a “manifestation of a depraved nature”, “a perversion of divine standards and as a violation of nature and natural affections” and “an abomination in the eyes of God.” It opposes same-sex marriages and equivalent unions. The SBC has urged churches not to show any approval of homosexuality; however, it also holds that “while the Bible condemns such practice as sin, it also teaches forgiveness and transformation, upon repentance, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” But that is only if a person turns away from the sexuality that they were born with. I personally think it is a gift from God. The SBC doesn’t even allow the term gay Christian because they say that even if you are celibate you cannot identify as both gay and Christian at the same time. The SBC only allows members of the LGBTQ+ community to worship with them if they denounce their sexuality.

My sister and I were raised in the Church of Christ. My father was far angrier at my sister for converting to being Southern Baptist when she got married than he ever was for me being gay. Yet, to show you how filled with hate he has become, he and my mother now attend a Southern Baptist Church. When I was growing up, he hated to even step foot in one of their churches. My mother was raised a Southern Baptist but claimed years ago that she was truly a member of the Church of Christ where we attended. I just don’t understand the sudden change in them. The only excuse I can find is because the church is convenient to where they are now living, and all my parents’ friends and neighbors attend that church. I find it disgusting that they would attend a church that is part of such a hate filled denomination. They think I will attend with them the next time I am home. I will not be. It will probably cause some strife, but I will not budge on this. I have been to a Baptist Church a few times in my life, and I always felt an evil surrounding me.

I am probably being a hypocrite on this because the Church of Christ is no better when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues. However, there are fundamental differences between the Church of Christ and the Southern Baptist Church. Most importantly, every congregation of the Church of Christ is independent. Southern Baptists claim the same thing, but they have the Southern Baptist Convention that governs all their churches and the denomination’s doctrine. The Church of Christ has no equivalent. Each Church of Christ could decide on their own to affirm the LGBTQ+ community because the elders of the church are in charge, but the Southern Baptist must abide by the doctrine of the SBC. Therefore, while I hold no hope for the SBC ever changing their stance, I do believe that the Church of Christ could and should. Will it ever happen? I can only hope and pray. One day, Christianity will accept the belief in a true universal love of God and will act accordingly.



After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words. — 1 Thessalonians 4:17-18

Yesterday, I went with my mother to visit Pop’s grave. Pop was Mama’s daddy and thus my grandfather. Pop died three years ago, and Mama faithfully puts new flowers on his grave. She took his death particularly hard, and she’s having just as hard of a time with her sister’s death (my aunt who died a few weeks ago). A few words about Pop before I go into the main part of today’s post. Pop was a giving and godly man. He was a faithful churchgoer and deacon until he was no longer able to attend church because of his failing eyesight, growing deafness, and his inability to walk very far. I have never heard anyone say a bad word against Pop, and I doubt I ever will. I also never heard Pop speak ill of anyone. There was truly nothing anyone could say against him. There are very few genuinely good men in this world, but Pop was one of them.

While we were at his gravesite, Mama remarked, “I won’t tell him that [my sister] died. I’m sure he already knows.” To which I remarked that they were together in heaven. Mama said, “No, they are not. They won’t be together in heaven until the Judgement Day.” And she is right, as the song below says:

When we all get to Heaven,
What a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see Jesus,
We’ll sing and shout the victory!

When we die we don’t automatically got to heaven or hell (Yes, I know Catholics believe there is a Purgatory in between). The Bible tells us that we will all go to heaven on the Day of Judgement, but many people believe that this occurs at the moment of death. Since I was raised in the churches of Christ, I go strictly by what the Bible says and have always been taught that it is on the Day of Judgement when we will all be together again. In my belief, and I really have nothing to back this up, but I believe that we do not know from the time of our death until we reach the Day of Judgement that any time has passed. I believe that the next thing we will know after death is that as we are judged on that day that our Lord will either say “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matthew 7:23) Or, as I hope and believe He will say to me, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” (Matthew 25:21)

So as I was thinking on this brief conversation I had with my mother, I thought of beloved friends and family members who have gone on before us, and i was suddenly singing the song below in my head. It has long been one of my favorites, because I love the message it gives.

When We All Get to Heaven

Sing the wondrous love of Jesus,
Sing His mercy and His grace.
In the mansions bright and blessèd
He’ll prepare for us a place.

When we all get to Heaven,
What a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see Jesus,
We’ll sing and shout the victory!

While we walk the pilgrim pathway,
Clouds will overspread the sky;
But when traveling days are over,
Not a shadow, not a sigh.

When we all get to Heaven,
What a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see Jesus,
We’ll sing and shout the victory!

Let us then be true and faithful,
Trusting, serving every day;
Just one glimpse of Him in glory
Will the toils of life repay.

When we all get to Heaven,
What a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see Jesus,
We’ll sing and shout the victory!

Onward to the prize before us!
Soon His beauty we’ll behold;
Soon the pearly gates will open;
We shall tread the streets of gold.

When we all get to Heaven,
What a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see Jesus,
We’ll sing and shout the victory!

The author of this song, Eliza Edmunds Hewitt, was a school teacher in Philadelphia and a Christian lay worker who was deeply devoted to the Sunday school movement. Like many of the other gospel song writers during the latter half of the nineteenth century, Eliza’s goal in writing her songs was to reach children and teach them the basic truths of the gospel. She dedicated this particular song to her own Sunday school class in Philadelphia. Though an invalid for much of her life, Eliza did not become bitter but devoted her life to God. I think we can all read the words of this beautiful song and rejoice that one day we will see Jesus, and on that day, we will shout the victory when we are told “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and we enter through the pearly gates to the place He has prepared for us.

The picture above is called “Judgement Day” and was created specifically for the 2009 GLAAD Art Auction by Troy Dunham of troyboydesign and the photographer Jeff Eason of Wilsonmodels and features many of New York’s finest assets in a modern day re-interpretation of the classic Paul Rubens painting “The Last Judgement” (seen below).

Today was not the typical Sunday.  I got up a little late to go to church this morning, so I hurried to get there.  I was about 2 minutes too late.  Church had already started, and our preacher was leading the singing.  I had noticed that our regular song leader had not left his house yet when I went by, so I had hoped that I would make it before they started.  Apparently, our regular song leader has bronchitis, and so our preacher had stepped in to lead the singing.  It’s a small congregation, so we don’t have enough kids to have Sunday School, but we do start every service with “Jesus Loves Me” for the kids.  As soon as the song was over, our preacher stopped and asked if I wanted to lead the singing today.  I was the song leader before I moved away for graduate school.  I was never very good at it.  I’m just not a loud enough and confident enough of a singer to lead a congregation, let alone a small congregation where every singer counts and there is no musical accompaniment since it is a Church of Christ. Luckily, there was already a song service planned out that I had used the last time I had to be the substitute song leader.  I just wasn’t exactly prepared.  I usually need to get mentally read to sing and make sure that the right tune comes out.  I admit, I faltered a few times today.  I even had to restart “The Old Rugged Cross” because I started it wrong.  Overall, I guess the song service went well.  I did my best. The Bible does say:

Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

Ephesians 5:19 (KJV)

Today, we made a joyful noise only because we did it for the glory of God.  Others may not have agreed that it was a joyful noise, but to me, there is nothing more beautiful than a group of people in a small country church where everyone is singing and making melody in our hearts to the Lord.