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For Some Activities, There are No Seasons (The 200th Monday Moment)

Rev. Dr. Ben Huelskamp

Monday, September 1, 2025

Happy Monday, my friends! Perhaps one of the most popular passages in the Bible, to the point that some people are surprised that it comes from the Bible, is found in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to throw away; a time to tear and a time to sew; a time to keep silent and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace” (3:1-8). Regardless of your particular politics, theology, philosophy, economics, or other belief systems, it’s impossible to be living at this moment and not feel torn between often conflicting emotions and thoughts. If you’re anything like me, your faith helps greatly, but doesn’t entirely get you through the worry, doubt, anxiety, and depression.

By my count, this is the 200^th Monday Moment. It’s a milestone for me, yes, but it’s also an accomplishment for everyone who takes the time to read and reflect on these essays. On April 1, 2024, I announced in the body of a Monday Moment that it would be my last. More than a few people stopped reading at the prayer and immediately responded with grief-filled messages, some urging me to continue writing. Had they continued reading they would have seen that it was an April Fool’s prank which I couldn’t help but send. Despite that vote of confidence in my reflections and my ideas, I’m often conflicted about what to write. Do I really have anything to contribute to your reflections, analysis, and meditation on this season of our individual and collective lives?

While I continue to wrestle with that question, here’s what I do know: for some activities, there are no seasons. Despite what Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 might say, there are no times to “refrain from embracing” unless someone asks you not to hug them. There is never a time to hate and though we have yet to figure out how to prevent them, there is never a legitimate or just time for war. I also know and the life of Jesus attests it too: there is always a season to speak out, resist, and make space for love.

How are you resisting? How are you loving in the world?

Let us pray: Gracious God, thank you for helping us reach the 200^th Monday Moment, but as we celebrate that collective achievement, grant us the grace and the courage to continue speaking out, resisting, and building your kin-dom of love and affirmation in our troubled world. Let us know love as we direct that love to all the places where it is most needed. We ask this in the name of our liberator, Jesus. Amen.

Blessings on your weeks, my friends! Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.

Faithfully,

Ben +

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-OSPsD98jM

The Trans Prophets Come to Bless Us

Guest Writer

Sunday, August 31, 2025

The Rev. Karl Stevens (he/him)

Rector, St. Stephen Episcopal Church (Columbus, OH) \

Allied Christian

My trans friends are the most courageous prophets I’ve ever known. Again and again, they go and stand before the rulers of this earth and offer a vision of hope. They reveal this vision to representatives and governors, bishops and priests. They are fearlessly willing to speak a better world into being.

Walter Brueggemann, the great scholar of the Hebrew Scriptures, wrote that “the task of prophetic imagination and ministry is to bring to public expression those very hopes and yearnings that have been denied so long and suppressed so deeply that we no longer know they are there.” When a prophet stands before the powerful, their words and presence refuse to accept all of the stories and excuses and obfuscations that the powerful have used to convince themselves that reality is static, that things can’t change, that the way the world is now is the only way that it can be. The prophet points to a future that is radically different then the present, and they do so at great risk to themselves.

To listen to the voice of the powerful, to believe that change isn’t possible, is to despair. There are times when

I give in to this despair, not in a dramatic way, not by tearing my hair out or rolling in tears upon my bed, but by becoming complacent, by saying that I want a better world while demonstrating my contentment with the way things are through my actions or inaction. It is then that the trans prophets come to bless me, extolling their vision of hope, speaking of the experiences that made them courageous, revealing the way that God has been present in their lives, and insisting on a future in which our society will emulate God’s love and care for them.

Reflection

What hopes and yearnings have you suppressed or denied, and how might your experience of God’s love allow you to express them?

What vision of the future gives you hope?

Action

Try to adopt a practice of hope-mongering. At least once a week, write down some change in society (a law that is passed, a decline in addiction rates, a demonstration of solidarity for those who are being oppressed) that gives you hope.

Action Alerts - August 29, 2025

LOVEboldly Staff

LOVEboldly’s Action Alerts is a weekly resource curating calls to action, news, opinions, commentary, reflections, and updates on legislative actions in Ohio and the US government. We know that democracy dies in silence and darkness. This message is our candle for you.

Upcoming Program

You are invited to join LOVEboldly, Stonewall Columbus, and Over Zero for “Queering the Message: Mitigating Political Violence Through Intentional and Strategic Communications” on Thursday, September 11, from 8:30am to 4pm at Stonewall Columbus (map).

The program is free and breakfast and lunch will be provided, but advanced registration is required. For more information and to register, visit https://www.loveboldly.net/queering-the-message.