{"id":9794,"date":"2026-06-13T22:06:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T02:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9794"},"modified":"2026-06-13T22:06:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T02:06:00","slug":"gods-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9794","title":{"rendered":"God&#8217;s Surprises"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Evans10.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Evans10.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9795\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Evans10.jpg 800w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Evans10-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Evans10-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Evans10-640x480.jpg 640w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Evans10-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I thought God wanted to use me to show gay people how to be straight. Instead God used gay people to show me how to be Christian.<\/p>\n<p>I thought the world needed my answers, but as it turns out, I needed the world&#8217;s questions. I needed to learn how to doubt well, listen better, and be humbled by how little I know. I needed to discover that evangelicalism is just one table in Christ&#8217;s banquet hall, the Great Cloud of Witnesses far more sprawling and diverse than I&#8217;d ever imagined.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Rachel Held Evans, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/braving_the_truth.html\">Braving the Truth<\/a><\/em>, p. 61<\/p>\n<p>Photo: Dipladenia flowers, June 13, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought God wanted to use me to show gay people how to be straight. Instead God used gay people to show me how to be Christian. I thought the world needed my answers, but as it turns out, I needed the world&#8217;s questions. I needed to learn how to doubt well, listen better, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,36,13,57,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-acceptance","category-community","category-god","category-grace","category-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9796,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9794\/revisions\/9796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}