What If God Is Waiting in the Margins?

    (Written with the assistance of AI)

    I used to believe God lived in pulpits. In the polished sermons and the praise songs that never quite spoke to my experience. I was taught to seek Him in the scriptures handed to me with filtered interpretations, delivered by men who feared difference more than sin itself.

    But then I came out...

    I came out as trans. As queer. As the kind of soul people warn their children about in church basements and youth groups. And I started to question whether the God they worshipped even knew my name.  I believed myself to be unworthy of His divine love.  My heart was broken; my spirit crushed.  "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit."  Psalms 34:18

    That’s when I found Him.

    Not in the sanctuaries, but in the silence after rejection. In the prayers spoken by trembling hands. In the fierce love of chosen family. In the tears of trans kids who were told they were abominations but still dared to believe they were beloved.

    What if God isn’t sitting comfortably inside the steeple?

    What if He’s waiting in the margins—on the edges of policy and pulpit, in the alleyways of forgotten faith, wrapped in the rainbow shawls of sacred survival?

    I’ve seen God in the hormone regimen that reconnected me with my spirit. In the music that stitched my soul back together. In the courage it takes to advocate for trans rights in rural towns that would rather pretend we don’t exist. I’ve felt the Divine in the ache of longing for justice. In the joy of being fully seen.

    The margins are messy. Holy spaces often are.

    They hold the stories that don’t make it into the hymnal. The bruised truths. The sacred scars. The kind of testimonies you won’t hear on Sunday morning because they’re too honest, too queer, too disruptive to the order of things.

    But here's the thing: Jesus gravitated toward the margins. To the outcasts, the lepers, the sex workers, the tax collectors. If you're looking for Him in places of comfort, you're not paying attention.  Jesus, Himself, said:  "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."

    So what if God is here—among the ones they've cast out, disguised as the very people they refuse to love?

    What if the margins are actually the center?

    What if the most radical faith is the kind that walks into the wilderness, sits with those pushed aside, and listens—without agenda, without fear?  "The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst.  But I the Lord will answer them.  I the God of Israel, will not forsake them."

    That’s where I found God.

    And I’m not going back.

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