God is Our Ally

The hills around Bugojno, BiH

If you ask me what my favourite passage of Scripture is you might assume that I would quote something from the New Testament. And while one of my favourite biblical characters if the Apostle Paul, my favourite passage of Scripture does not come from any of his letters, or from the book of Acts. Instead it comes from the book of Psalms. More specifically my favourite passage is Psalm 121. While I admire Paul’s outlook and perspective on the Gospel and how he contextualizes the Gospel to his mission to the gentiles, God has used Psalm 121 to restore not only my faith in him, but my inner strength in times of weakness. 

Before I get into Psalm 121, I want to explain why this Psalm is my favourite passage. When I was 18, I had recently graduated from high school, and during the last few months I was struggling with depression and anxiety. At this point I had stopped actively reaching out to my friends, and spent most of the time in my head replaying unhealthy thoughts. It was during this time, my youth pastor reached out and asked me to come on a short term missions trip to Slovakia. Before we left, one of the other parents made pillow cases for everyone on the trip, and gave them a card with Scripture in it. As you can probably guess, the Scripture that was in my card was Psalm 121. Here is what it says:

I lift up my eyes to the hills—

    from where will my help come?

My help comes from the Lord,

    who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;

    he who keeps you will not slumber.

He who keeps Israel

    will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;

    the Lord is your shade at your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day,

    nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil;

    he will keep your life.

The Lord will keep

    your going out and your coming in

    from this time on and forevermore.

The first verses talk about how when we don’t know where our help comes from we can be rest assured that God is there. Not only does this passage start off by saying that our help comes from the Lord (YHWH), but they also tell us who He is. He is the maker of heaven and earth. The God who created everything that we see, and everything that we don’t see, is the same God who will help us. 

The rest of the passage tells us what that looks like. There is nothing in this world that will stop God from being our helper. He is our constant watcher. Our constant ally. 

But what does it mean for God to be our helpers? For us LGBTQ+ people it means that we have an ultimate ally in God. He is the one who will ultimately fight our battles and bring oppression to an end. He is the one we can turn to for comfort when we are the recipients of bigotry, slander and violence. This doesn’t mean that we let people walk over us or continue to abuse us, but it means that in the midst of things that are out of our control, we have one who is greater than the ‘enemies’ we face. 

In 2013 I lived in Bosnia-Hercegovina for 3 months. During this time, I struggled with my identity and what this meant for me as a future pastor. It was in those moments that I would look unto the hills of Bugojno, the city I was in, and remember that God would be my help in times of weakness. God is the one who would fight for me, and the queer Christian community, when I no longer had the strength to fight.

Today marks the first day of pride month, and now more than ever we need to rely on God to fight our battles in the Church. There will be times when we want to give up and throw in the towel. Working towards full inclusion in the Church, or waiting for full inclusion to be the norm, is exhausting and tiring. But we are not alone. 

For those who consider yourselves an ally for the LGBTQ+ community, and are actively working towards full inclusion in your Church, part of being an ally is checking in with your queer siblings in Christ. They need encouragement, and an uplifted spirit. While you also need that you have the option to ‘check out mentally’ when you get tired, we queer Christians don’t get that option. We live day in and day out thinking about how our lives are affected on a daily basis by unaffirming policies and theologies. 

This pride, let us remember that God is our helper in the midst of our struggle for full inclusion.