In The Affirmative: Milestones and millstones

When we reach a milestone, or an important truth makes sense for the first time, there is a radiance, like standing inside a blessing, writes Wendy in response to this original artwork by her wife Jo.

OUR MOST READ BLOGGER since 2022 is back with the twelfth and final in the series sharing her story. This month she reflects on her year of blog posts.

In the Affirmative has been a monthly blog from Open Table member Wendy Young who shares her life, thoughts and experience as a queer Christian in Britain. You can read the rest of the series here.

“Does it sound possible to bring people closer to God by telling them they’re forever separated from God? ”

Dear friends,

This seems to be a letter. It is the twelfth and final post in a series of blogs - a milestone - but yes, I do think it is also a letter.

During this last year of writing for the Open Table Network, I have often tried to imagine who you are.

I have a picture of a version of you, scrolling on your phone held in one hand while the other is hanging onto the Tube railing for dear life as you speed through London’s Underground tunnels to your workplace.

Another version of you is sitting at a desk in a home office on a break between work meetings but still screen bound, your body uncomfortable after too many hours of sitting but now you don’t feel like taking that stroll either.

Perhaps you’re in bed late at night trying to soothe your mind with something positive and uplifting and sometimes I have given you the opposite.

I wanted you to get to know me better, through the life stories I’ve been telling you. I wish I had a chance to get to know you better too, instead of always just imagining you. What I will do, though, is keep coming to this website to see what you’ve said and experienced, what you fear and dream and pray, because as I said in my first blog for In the Affirmative: we have at least one thing in common: we love God and God loves us. In my opinion that is the most important thing about us.

Recently I have been aware that for the first time in my life August is truly ‘the summer holidays’. I’m from South Africa, where summer is at its hottest in February and school terms start in January and finish in December, when my summer holidays used to occur. Everything is quite different on the other side of the world and the penny about what August means in the UK has only just dropped for me. That’s because last September I started a new job, where everything we do revolves around school terms. Now, for the first time, I share that August feeling of long, hot days and a mind that wanders to far-off places easily (that’s if you’re not there in person, after joining the national exodus). It is a communal feeling of having reached a milestone and taking a breather before the next year starts again in September.

Alongside work commitments drawing to a natural pause, my writing has followed suit. My motivation for this series has always been to show you a glimpse of the glory of God shining in an otherwise often dark and traumatic life. Since I was very small, I have believed that my purpose on Earth is to show others who God is to me, and to pray that they might want a relationship with God too. That is the opposite of the millstone mentioned in the Bible.

Matthew 18:6, Mark 9:42 and Luke 17:2 say the same thing: it would be better for someone who causes a ‘little one’ to stumble to have a large millstone hung around their neck and be drowned in the sea. The imagery used is significant. A millstone was a massive, heavy stone used in grinding grain, often turned by an animal. In ancient times, fastening one around a person’s neck and throwing them into the sea was a form of irreversible punishment. The term ‘little ones’ refers to believers, especially those who are young in the faith or spiritually vulnerable. To cause someone to ‘stumble’ means to cause someone to sin or to undermine their faith. As believers who love God and who know that God loves us, we have a weighty responsibility to avoid misleading and abusing people, and rather enabling them to live a truly flourishing, abundant life.

This underscores the seriousness of spiritual harm and the certainty of divine consequences for causing it. I remember the times people (ordained ministers and spiritual counsellors and youth leaders and teachers!) told me I would be going to hell because of my sexuality. Maybe they truly believed they would be thrown into the sea with a millstone round their neck if they didn’t say that. I had definitely heard one or more of these people say that they wouldn’t be doing their duty to bring people to God if they didn’t tell me I was eternally damned.

Hang on. Doesn’t that strike you like a BIG paradox? Contradictory? Absurd? Does it sound possible to bring people closer to God by telling them they’re forever separated from God?

I have chosen to tell you that God loves you. Over and over again throughout this blog series, I have tried to help you believe this. There is nothing that can separate you from God’s love!

‘For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ - Romans 8:39, NIV

The moment the penny about this drops for you, like August just did for me, that moment is a milestone.

It is time for me to leave you now. I have enjoyed writing here so much that I am pretty sure I’ll be back somewhere in the future. Until then, I have a degree to finish, a job to learn better, a two-week cruise in the Mediterranean to go on, a sermon to write, a service to lead but above all, a family to love as closely as possible to how God loves me. The family I have left behind in South Africa, the family I married into here in the UK, and my church family at St Mark’s Milverton. We’re an Inclusive Church - in fact, we’re actually affirming - and you’re more than welcome!

Thank you for reading my words. May they have blessed you, whichever version of my imagined ‘you’ you might be closest to. Until we meet again, tell each other your stories so that God can shine through them and through you. Let’s be mindful never to earn a millstone. Be kind, be gentle, be forgiving with yourself and with each other. And tell people that God loves them.

Lots of love from me too,

Wendy