I’ve long said I wish as a church we could open our hands to receive the irreconcilable dilemma we’re faced with around sexual orientation, as a gift from God. Am I out of my mind to say this? Maybe. But I do not assert this glibly. As a 60-year-old, I know the crucible events in my life — as wracked with pain as they are — drive me deeper into the love of God. Break my heart open. Make me more humble. And perhaps a tad wiser.

I believe enough in the good providence of God to ask — why has this conflict — a conflict that tears us down the middle in families, congregations, denominations, nations — why has this conflict shown up with such ferocity? What does God want us to learn as a people? What does God want to teach us? I am energized by the questions and therefore receive the monumental dilemma about how to be faithful Christ followers with our sexuality as a gift. God is calling us to grow in faith and faithfulness.

How are we being asked to grow? To read our Bibles with new, intense questions. To do the messy, marvelous theological work that is required to understand what the unsettling Spirit is calling us toward in this day. To fulfill the law to love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves.

As the church is wracked with painful conflict (and yes, it is horrible what we’re doing to each other in social media), the educator part of me thinks of this as a developmental stage. Groups have stages, as do individuals. Any one of us who has been a teenager or parent stumbling around to negotiate differences, knows about the difficult work of differentiation. It seems our default setting as Mennonites is to cut off relationships and withdraw into a “pure” enclave of the like minded, heaping vitriol on the other side. This is classic sectarian immaturity. Experience has shown that the differences follow us into the enclaves and only fragment us further.

When received as a gift, as an essential part of healthy development, the wrestling eventuates in an amazing kind of growing up together — where parents and teenagers grow wiser and more able to embrace varying degrees of difference within the family.

The theologian part of me asks again — how might we open our hands and hearts at this moment to discover the gifts of God’s grace within our irreconcilable differences? Rather than threatening, accusing, and demeaning each other — how might we receive this conflict as God’s invitation to meet at the foot of the cross?

Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary New Testament professor Mary Schertz writes that taking the cross of Jesus seriously means that suffering love is to be played out in the arena of discernment around difficult issues, as in all other areas of our common life. There can be no holier, compassionate work than to engage in the difficult conversations we currently find ourselves within.

Being honestly transparent with each other is humbling, hard work and yet that is when we come to know how gracious is the love of Christ “who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross.” Our hearts will be tugged (painfully) wider and wider open as we hold together what seems irreconcilable. Isn’t this after all what is so astonishing, that we serve a Lord in whom “all things hold together” and through whom “God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things”?

Jesus taught us that the fulfillment of the law is all about loving God with heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. The fulfillment of the law is all about the integrity of life — where internal affections and external actions harmonize. The fulfillment of the law is about putting our desire for God above all other desires and judging all human desire in light of our desire for God.

So yes, we can open our hands and receive the irreconcilable dilemma we’re faced with around sexual orientation as a gift from God. Why? Because we are made in the image of God. Every one of us. The image of God is our most fundamental DNA.

As persons who bear God’s indelible, grace-filled imprint, we can learn to discern together — even grow in wisdom and maturity together. With the illuminating Spirit as guide, we can teach each other about the diverse ways we fulfill the law by putting our desire for God above all other desires; our love for God above all loves.

“God so loved the world. … ” Clearly God has hope in humankind and in the church. God hasn’t given up on us. And so, we live in hope.

Sara Wenger Shenk is president of Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind. This first appeared on her blog at ambs.edu.