Our family has been in transition for years now. Over a decade. That we were in transition became much more apparent when COVID hit. For a lot of people in our old church, a big transition took place when depravity in the leadership manifested itself, but for us, it started way earlier than that manifestation. I am grateful to have been reading through the Bible daily with maybe a handful of misses over a twenty year period. It became evident that many around us were more devoted to tradition and willing to use their authority to enforce tradition than they were interested in following Jesus. The realization of that truth, while definitely a phenomena on my radar for a long time, became the elephant in the room when I was forced to evaluate what I was doing and with whom I was doing it. Our move away from that was precipitous. Just one Sunday, I realized I could not follow Jesus and remain a part of a group with the fruits manifested by the authoritarian leadership of the group and the exclusivity and gatekeeping of the group elites in policing who they let in and who they disdained.

We find great joy in being out of that, but even greater joy and gratitude for what it has brought us into. The concept of Christ Alone is engraved in us in a way it could never have been had we not gone through this. Still, and I do not think it is just our big transition and literal epiphany, the world is a very different place than it was 15-20 years ago and appears to be getting stranger and more foreboding by the minute.