Waiting for Home
As we start this final week of Advent, we get closer to the end of the Collective of Queer Christian Leaders’ LGBTQIA+ Affirming Advent Devotional, What Are You Waiting For? We have enjoyed being able to wrestle with Advent through this devotional, as we prepare for what is to come.
Today’s entry, brought to us by Peter Clare from Transmission Ministry Collective, leads us into a difficult topic of the idea of home. For some of us who are LGBTQ+ Christians, home—physical and spiritual—is just an idea. Not a place that we are able to grasp in reality. Not a place where authenticity can be found. So, we wait. We wait for home.
Waiting for Home
Over the past year, 19,000 asylum seekers have arrived in my home city of Chicago from the southern U.S. border. Many are sleeping on police station floors as they wait for more permanent shelter. In response to the city's attempts to create better support infrastructure, there is active backlash in many neighborhoods to the idea of sharing a home with these new arrivals.
This response reflects a common scarcity mindset. Often, we think of home as a fortress to keep people out, rather than a sanctuary to welcome people in.
Like many queer Christians, I’ve spent much of my life looking for both physical and spiritual home. As I’ve deconstructed my faith, I’ve come to understand home as less a place and more an orientation: a radical openness to others in caring community.
This Advent, how can we practice the openness that will allow others to find home?
Prayer: Jesus, help us be home to each other. Amen.
Peter Clare, Transmission Ministry Collective
Next Steps
You can download the entire What Are You Waiting For? devotional, which has daily entries from various voices from the Collective of Queer Christian Leaders, below.
