The Love of a Non-anxious God

Nine-year-old Lindsay Holifield sat in the fourth row at church. Squirming and restless in the stiff wooden pew, the preacher’s words fell harshly onto her ears.

“Look,” he said to the congregation, “if you have an issue with my message, then you have an issue with God himself. I am merely relaying his words.”

Holifield spent most of her childhood in fundamentalist circles that communicated similar messages in similar tones. As a result, she figured that God was angry, or, at best, perpetually shaking his head at her. As a young woman, Holifield sought a better way inside a more progressive faith community. Eventually, she deconstructed altogether and converted to Reform Judaism.

After three years, a conversation with a Christian friend who Holifield fondly describes as “non-anxious” became the turning point for Holifield to find hope in the gospel.

“My story screams of God’s long-game redemptive work that was out of sight for so long,” she wrote recently at CT. May we ask God for the grace to believe that he is moving and working for our good always—not shaming us with scornful words nor leaving us to find our way alone. And may we allow him to draw us near with his non-anxious love.

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