What I have so far:
The first question that people raise is “do you think that God made a mistake?” In other words, do I blame God for this circumstance?
It would be very easy for me to beat my breast, tear at my hair and wail about how I have been cursed by God with this affliction. Not only would it be easy, there would be a certain comfort and freedom there. If this is God’s fault, if this is something God has done to me, then I am freed from struggling to get beyond assigning blame and I can settle into a warm and comfortable place of feeling sorry for myself.
But, as tempting as it may be to play Job, I don’t think that’s a place where we are supposed to stay. Self-pity and blaming our problems on God are not what we are created for.
God looked at creation and called it good, Paul tells us that “all things work together for good,” but he also tells us that creation is groaning in labor pains waiting for the coming times.
We know that through the redeeming death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has done what needs to be done to redeem us and all of creation. But, we don’t take that knowledge to mean that every thing should always go the way that we want it to go. The processes of nature are complex and we don’t expect God to interfere with them simply we want them to be different. We don’t expect God to stop the rain just because we want to go golfing, and we don’t blame God when the bread falls butter side down.
No, where we meet the power of God is not in God’s preventing bad things from happening to us, but in God’s ability to bring good out of worst that happens to us. My comfort is not that God will wrap me in cotton wool and keep anything from happening to me, my comfort, my only comfort is that in life and in death, and through everything that happens to me is that:
I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
Do I think God made a mistake? No. I trust that the sovereign Lord of all creation doesn’t make mistakes. Do I blame God for my being Transgendered? No. I believe that whether society or I decide that being Transgendered is a blessing or a curse, God has the power to use me and my condition for good, if I but trust in God to guide me.
For the non-Presbyterians reading this, the quote is the answer to the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism, "What is your only comfort, in life and in death?"
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