I have a friend, Andrew Marin, who runs an organization called The Marin Foundation. His mission is to ”build bridges between the LGBT community and the Church through scientific research, biblical and social education, and diverse community gatherings.” Everyday he gets love and hate mail. People an all sides of the lightning rod issue of sexuality love him, and people on all sides of the issue hate him. He wakes up every morning and lives in the tension that exists around our sexuality.

Tension is something we often seek to avoid. We don’t like it. We pay massage therapists to rub it out of our bodies and talk therapists to get it out of our heads. We run from tension.

But I think some of the most amazing people in history don’t run from tension but towards it. Martin Luther King Jr. Ghandi. William Wilberforce. Steve Jobs. All these people moved towards tension, they lived between the here and now and the what could be.

Tension is only bad when it doesn’t lead to action. Tension is only bad when we let it stay inside of us and don’t create something from that tension.

What tension are you currently living in? Is it leading to creation or festering inside of you?