Teach Me to Do Your Will

“Teach me to do Your will,
For You are my God;
Your Spirit is good.
Lead me in the land of uprightness.”

—Psalm 143:10

I have prayed many times for God to show me the path He has set out for me. Sometimes I pray for a clear direction, hoping God will make the right choice unmistakable. At other times, I simply ask Him to guide my next step because I cannot see far enough ahead to know where the road will lead.

Psalm 143:10 expresses that longing beautifully: “Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God.” David does not merely ask God to reveal His will; he asks God to teach him how to follow it. Knowing the right path and having the faith to walk it are not always the same thing. We may recognize where God is leading us yet hesitate because the way seems uncertain, difficult, or different from what others expect of us.

This can be especially true for LGBTQ+ Christians. Many of us were taught that embracing who we are would take us away from God. We may have spent years praying for God to change us, fearing that our sexuality or gender identity placed us outside His will. When nothing changed, we may have wondered whether God had abandoned us—or whether we had somehow failed Him.

Yet the psalmist reminds us, “Your Spirit is good.” God does not guide us through shame, self-hatred, or despair. Those things do not reflect the character of the One whom Scripture tells us is love: “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:8). If God is love, then His will cannot be separated from love. His guidance may challenge us, stretch us, and call us to grow, but it will never require us to despise the person He created us to be.

We do not have to choose between living truthfully and walking with God. The God who guides our steps is the same God who formed us and knows us completely. Psalm 139:13–14 declares, “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” God knew the whole of us before anyone else placed a label, expectation, or condemnation upon us. Nothing about us was hidden from Him, and nothing about us came as a surprise.

When we ask God to show us His will, we must learn to listen for His voice beneath the voices of those who claim to speak for Him. Some people confuse their own prejudices with God’s commands. Others try to make their discomfort into a burden that LGBTQ+ people must carry. Yet Jesus warned us to judge teachings by the fruit they produce: “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). Teachings that produce fear, isolation, hopelessness, and self-hatred are not bearing the fruits of God’s Spirit. Paul tells us that those fruits are “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23).

God’s path leads toward those things. It leads us toward greater love, deeper peace, honest relationships, compassion for others, and the freedom to live with integrity. It does not always lead us along the easiest road. Living openly and authentically may require courage. Following God may mean leaving behind a church that refuses to recognize our humanity, questioning beliefs we were once afraid to examine, or accepting that some people may never understand us. Nevertheless, God does not abandon us on that journey.

“Show me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths,” Psalm 25:4–5 says. “Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; on You I wait all the day.” We may want God to reveal the entire path at once, but He often gives us enough light for only the next step. Faith is trusting that the One who shows us that step will remain with us for all the steps that follow.

Proverbs 3:5–6 offers similar reassurance: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” Trusting God does not mean surrendering our minds or accepting every claim made in His name. It means trusting the goodness of God even when our understanding is incomplete. It means believing that His love is more reliable than human judgment and that His grace is greater than the barriers others try to build around it.

For LGBTQ+ Christians, discerning God’s will may begin with accepting one essential truth: we are loved. Paul writes that nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). Nothing includes our sexual orientation. Nothing includes our gender identity. Nothing includes the questions we are still trying to answer or the parts of ourselves we are still learning to embrace.

We may not always know exactly where God is leading us. I continue to pray that He will show me the path He has set out for me, and I suspect I will continue praying that prayer throughout my life. Perhaps that uncertainty is part of faith. We follow not because we can see the entire road, but because we trust the goodness of the One leading us.

“Teach me to do Your will,” we pray. Teach us to love more fully, to live more honestly, to extend mercy more generously, and to walk more humbly. Lead us away from fear and into truth. Lead us away from shame and into the knowledge that we are wonderfully made. Lead us onto level ground where we can stand securely in the assurance that we belong to You.

God is good. God is love. Wherever He leads us, His love will go with us.

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Moment of Zen: Long Hot Showers

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Ocean Front Property

🎶 I’ve got some ocean-front property in Arizona.
If you’ll buy that, I’ll throw the Golden Gate in free. 🎶

I haven’t written much about politics lately. Honestly, I find the state of American politics disheartening and depressing. I could say, “I don’t understand how anyone could return a man to the presidency after he had been impeached twice and demonstrated an almost pathological disregard for the truth,” but sadly, I do understand. Too many Americans are motivated by racism, greed, resentment, and plain old hate.

When I heard that he, whose name I refuse to mention, had promised every adult American citizen a $5,000 check if Republicans retain control of both houses of Congress, the chorus of George Strait’s “Ocean Front Property” immediately began playing in my head. Anyone who believes that promise is a colossal fucking idiot.

He offered no meaningful explanation of how the government could afford the estimated $1.3 trillion price tag, how the payments would be distributed, or how he would persuade Congress to authorize them. He merely pointed to tariff revenue and declared that the money would have to be spent in the United States.

This is the fourth time during his current term that he has floated the idea of sending checks directly to Americans. Not one of those proposals has resulted in a payment. Forbes may say that he has “suggested” these checks rather than promised them, but millions of Americans undoubtedly hear a promise—especially when he says, “If the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000.”

The man is a habitual liar. He has repeatedly claimed that the United States has “won” the war with Iran, yet the war continues and American service members have died in it. The conflict was launched on claims about Iran’s nuclear ambitions that I do not believe justified starting another war in the Middle East.

There is even an acronym for his repeated pattern of threats, boasts, reversals, and retreats: TACO—“T—— Always Chickens Out.” The expression originated on Wall Street as a description of his tariff threats and subsequent reversals, but it has since expanded to cover his similar back-and-forth rhetoric about foreign conflicts and geopolitical posturing. Still, many of his boasts cannot be dismissed as merely chickening out. They are simply lies.

So, if anyone is gullible enough to fall for this bullshit, I have some ocean-front property in Arizona to sell you. If you buy it, I’ll throw in the Golden Gate Bridge for free.

Hell, I’ll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge while I’m at it.

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Thursday

Today is one of those days when I wish I could stay in bed all day. I went to bed early last night because I had a migraine that was steadily getting worse. I still have a dull headache this morning, along with the foggy-headed feeling neurologists call the postdrome phase—sometimes referred to as a “migraine hangover.”

If Isabella hadn’t demanded breakfast and nature hadn’t called, I would probably still be in bed instead of writing this. Unless the headache and fogginess get worse, though, I’ll go to work today. It usually improves once I’ve been awake and moving for a while. I still have plenty to do at work, so staying busy should help push the headache to the back of my mind—and hopefully make the day pass a little faster.

Anyway, have a great day, everyone!

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Giorgio Ramondetta for Yummy Magazine

The Work I Love

Giorgio Ramondetta views Jan van de Cappelle’s Shipping in a Calm at Flushing with a States General Yacht Firing a Salute (1649) at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

It’s Wednesday, and the week is almost half over. I’ve spent only one day in the office so far, but it was a very busy one. Today will likely be no different. In fact, I doubt there will be a single day this week when I find myself wondering what to do. Emails, meetings, training sessions, and preparations for upcoming classes are more than enough to fill my days.

Don’t think I’m complaining. I love being busy with these kinds of tasks. They make the day pass much faster. I often become so absorbed in what I’m doing that when I finally look at the clock, I’m surprised by how much time has passed. If my days were filled with activities I dreaded, it would be altogether different. Instead, much of what I’m doing this week—and, I hope, throughout the semester—is the part of my job I enjoy most.

Things are not perfect at work, but I genuinely love the work I do.

Part of my job involves welcoming our guests. Sometimes it is a special dignitary visiting campus who wants a tour of the museum. Other times it is a scholar who has come to speak as part of our lecture series, and I have the opportunity to entertain them, show them some of Vermont, and take them out to dinner. It is a role for which I am particularly well suited. Being from the South and growing up in an environment where good manners and hospitality were expected prepared me well for this aspect of my job. I have a reputation within the university for being able to welcome and entertain dignitaries, while our museum has earned a wider reputation among some prestigious cultural institutions for the hospitality we provide our guests. I take a great deal of pride in that.

Then there is the academic side of my job. I get to teach history through artifacts. In some classes, I teach students how to analyze and interpret objects. Sometimes, I tell the history of particular artifacts, while other sessions involve tours of the museum or its collections. Each class is different, and each gives me another opportunity to help students understand that objects are more than simply things displayed behind glass. They can reveal stories about the people who made, owned, used, exchanged, or preserved them.

I enjoy working with our students because, for the most part, they are well behaved, polite, and willing to engage. Best of all, I get to teach and prepare lessons without having to grade papers and exams, which was always the bane of my existence when I taught in a more traditional setting. I receive the parts of teaching that I love without being burdened by the part I dreaded most.

Of course, there are difficult personalities to contend with from time to time. I’m not paid enough, and there are certainly mornings when I would rather remain at home with Isabella. No job—and no workplace—is perfect. Still, when I consider the work itself, I know how fortunate I am.

After all, how many people can genuinely say, “I love the work I do”?

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