Loving the world madly, like God does.

Last night I had the opportunity to be a part of Colorado and national history. The Colorado legislature passed a civil unions bill last month which included civil unions for LGBT people and their partners. I had the honor of attending the bill signing earlier and last night, at midnight on May 1 the law went into effect. To help celebrate, clergy from all different denominations and faith traditions were asked to be on hand to sign civil union licenses along with plenty of magistrates (if people didn't want a religious service). Nadia was asked to be one of the officiating clergy, and in true HFASS style, we had liturgy booklets ready with a liturgy for blessing civil unions, hymns for couples to sing if they wanted, and 20 or so members of the community ready to surround the newly unioned couple with love, support, and prayers.

There, of course, were some glitches in the system, like one couple had the wrong names on their license and had to go back and get a new one. But, perhaps the biggest glitch was that they did not have regular coffee for the event, only decaf. That meant at 1am I got to run to the 24 hour diner 7 blocks away so we all could stay awake for the whole thing. (These are the very glamorous and exciting parts of internship)

Angela and Michelle

3 HFASS couples got their union licenses last night. One couple, Angela and Michelle, met at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago 7 years ago, and are planning a ceremony for August but told me that they couldn't imagine not being part of such a historic and momentous event. After Nadia signed their license, all 20 of us belted out Blessed Assurance at the top of our lungs in the middle of the municipal building. I cannot imagine a more fitting song for these two as we blessed their lives together.

It was quite an incredible night, and a huge honor to see the faces of 260 people getting unioned, and getting to be part of blessing some of those unions in the presence of God and an awesome church that shows up in the middle of the night to sing, bless, and love people madly, like God does.