He replied, when evening comes, you say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red,

and in the morning, today it will be stormy weather for the sky is red and in the morning today it will be stormy

for the sky is red and overcast you know how to interpret the appearance of the sky but you

cannot interpret the signs of the times this is the word of the Lord. Thank you, God.

I met Brad at the East Village Church where I served as youth pastor of my early 20s.

He'd come to New York, like so many do, dreaming of a theater career performing on Broadway. Back in Alabama, Brad was the best of the best.

Lead in every play, climactic solo in every musical, but as the story tends to go in Manhattan,

big fish in a small pond became just another fish in an ocean.

So he was hustling to audition after audition,

dealing with the inevitable stream of rejection,

and actively awaiting his big break.

Brad also grew up in the church.

He was at church every Sunday and a youth group every Wednesday evening,

and no one made him go he wanted to. He had an experience with the love of God in a summer camp

when he was 15 years old, and the faith of his parents became his in a really sincere way.

It was about 18 months into his life in New York, though, that Brad began to confront, to really

confront for the very first time, the fact that as far back as he could remember, he had only ever

been romantically attracted to other guys. Brad wasn't sexually abused, wasn't groomed or

manipulated. He had tried to like girls, but his mind or his body or some combination of the two

seemed bent in a different direction, a fact that he'd kept buried when he hoped he would

grow out of, but it wasn't happening.

In the next couple of years, represented a long, slow distancing from his faith and an equally long

...