Daily The Bible is Not a Sex Manual

Loving God, You who spoke the universe into being and then called it very good — including the bodies You shaped from dust and breath — teach me to read Your Word the way You intended it: not as a catalog of prohibitions, but as a love letter written to the whole of who I am.

Luke tells us You looked at the hungry and called them blessed — not because emptiness is virtuous, but because You saw their aching honestly. They weren't pretending to be full. Lord, give me that same honesty when I bring my questions about intimacy, desire, and embodiment to Your Scriptures. The Catholic tradition has always insisted that the body is not the soul's enemy but its companion — that bread and wine become Your very presence, that water truly washes clean, that the laying on of hands carries real grace. If You trust the physical world enough to make it sacramental, surely You trust me enough to wrestle with these texts rather than simply fear them.

When I am tempted to reduce Your Word to a list of rules, remind me that the Song of Songs exists — that You preserved poetry about longing right alongside the prophets. When I am tempted to ignore Your Word altogether, remind me that love without truth is only sentimentality.

Make me brave enough to sit with Scripture's complexity and compassionate enough to extend that same patience to others who are sitting with it too. In the name of Jesus, who touched lepers and welcomed the ashamed, Amen.