Tuesday, June 2, 2026
The Rt. Rev. Michael Curry considers how God is always leading us beyond what we think we know:
There will be a time when God’s GPS points you in a direction that makes people uncomfortable. It may make you uncomfortable. The evolution of long-held beliefs can be a spiritual earthquake; the ground beneath us shaking, the very fault lines of our identity shifting and seeking to resettle. But if we can make it through, we find the reward: not an easy journey but a share of what the Bible calls “peace that passes all understanding,” the peace of knowing we are living love’s way, without contradiction….
We humans are walking bundles of contradictions. I know that I am, and experience suggests that I’m not alone in that. As people often describe relationships … “It’s complicated.” It is and we are.
In 2000, Curry was elected bishop in the Episcopal Church as the church wrestled with questions about the full inclusion and equality of LGBTQ persons in the church:
Experience and friendships had long taught me that gays and lesbians were as Christian as anybody else. Still, when it came to the public blessing of unions (marriage wasn’t yet on the table), I was stuck in the unspoken disapproval of my upbringing. Homosexuality happened behind closed doors, not at the altar.
And yet, during that same upbringing, … “love your neighbor” was held up constantly, forcefully, as a core value and commitment. That conviction fueled the civil rights movement that had given me birth. I heard it all the time. But somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that that truth must be true for gay and lesbian friends in every respect.
As a bishop, I made a solemn vow to “guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church.” I had also vowed to “be merciful to all, show compassion to the poor and strangers, and defend those who have no helper.” I was beginning to see that obedience to the letter and the spirit of both of those vows was leading me to a real contradiction….
I was growing, and my own beliefs had evolved. But another way to say it is that I was becoming more and more open to letting the spirit of God breathe through me and make me new. Therein is the source of real personal change, evolution, and transformation, and it’s never ending….
The late [lay theologian] Verna Dozier … was a real mentor, teacher, and soul friend to me. In her book The Dream of God, she offered this wisdom: “We always see through a glass darkly, and that is what faith is about. I will live by the best I can discern today. Tomorrow I may find out I was wrong. Since I do not live by being right, I am not destroyed by being wrong.”
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Fill Up Where You Feel Empty
A simple practice that could change your life.
| TYSON BRADLEY. JUN 1 |
Hey friends,
On a recent morning call, someone shared a picture she’d drawn. It was a pitcher pouring water into a cup, filling it until it overflowed, and then the cup became a pitcher pouring into someone else’s cup.
She’d been sitting with this idea that God pours His love into us until we’re so full we can’t hold it, and it just naturally spills over onto the people around us. And she said when she actually practices it, when she takes a few minutes to imagine that love pouring in and let herself feel it, something shifts. She stops being thirsty. She’s not grasping at people to get something from them anymore, because she’s already full. Loving others stops being a chore she has to push herself to do, and just becomes the overflow of what she already has.
So I asked her a question, and I want to ask you the same one.
What if you got specific about receiving until you are full?
Because here’s what I’ve found. When we talk about being filled with God’s love, it can stay kind of vague. But the love isn’t vague. It always meets us in the exact place we feel empty.
So say the thing you feel you lack the most is money. What would it be like to just fill up with the sense of being fully resourced? To sit with all the stories of Jesus and just always having enough… enough, enough, enough… until you’re overflowing with it? Or say the thing you ache for is to feel safe. What’s it like to fill up with safety until it spills over? Or to feel wanted. Or to feel like you’re not a disappointment.
I’ll be honest with you about mine. The thing I keep coming back to is a fear of not being right with God. So for me, it’s filling up with this sense of, “Tyson, you’re right on track. I see you in the truth of who you are. I’m not disappointed in you.” Filling up with that until there’s no more room for the fear.
And that’s the thing underneath all of it.
Every one of these, the money, the safety, the feeling wanted, the health, the fear of letting people down… they all trace back to the same root. They all come back to some version of fear. Fear that there won’t be enough. Fear that I’m on my own. Fear that I’m not okay.
And fear dissolves in love. There’s a line in Scripture that says it plainly: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.” (1 John 4:18)Not “manage your fear.” Not “try harder to be brave.” The fear just doesn’t survive contact with love that’s complete. You don’t have to fight the fear. You fill up the room it was living in.
Now I want to be careful here, because our heads love to take something like this and turn it into a formula. “Great, I found the hack. Fill up with love, get the thing.” That’s not it. This isn’t a vending machine. It’s just a practice… a way of receiving what’s already true, and then seeing what comes of it. Some days you’ll forget entirely. You’ll get caught up in life. And then you’ll step into one of these moments and there it is again. His presence. His peace. The sense of having enough.
There’s even something to this that your body already knows. When you feel genuinely safe and full, your nervous system actually settles out of survival mode, and that’s the state where you can be generous, present, creative, connected. You literally cannot pour out when you’re clenched and protecting yourself. Scarcity makes us grasp. Fullness lets us give. God designed us so that receiving comes first, and the overflow takes care of itself.
So here’s what I want to invite you into.
Take a moment and get honest about where you feel empty right now. Not the surface thing… the real one. The thing you keep trying to secure on your own.
And then ask Him:
“Lord, what am I actually afraid of here? And what would it be like to receive what I really need from You instead of trying to get it on my own?”
Then just let Him fill that exact place. Don’t measure how full you are. Don’t grade it. Just receive, and notice what happens when there’s a little less room for the fear.
You were never meant to generate this on your own. You were meant to receive it… and then watch it overflow.
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Individual Reflection
Where is the place you most keep trying to fill yourself — and what would it feel like to just stop and receive there?
Group Discussion — choose one:
- What has it cost you to stay “stuck in the unspoken disapproval” of something you were raised with?
- Where in your life right now is fear occupying space that love hasn’t fully reached yet?
- What does it look like for you when receiving comes before giving — and what makes that hard?
