Songs of Truth



For I am persuaded,
that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come,
 nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God.
 Romans 8:38-39 KJV

We have a friend who sings this verse in one breath around the campfire.  It makes me giggle every time, probably because it makes all the kids giggle at a silly time of the night and probably because it is such an odd talent to have.  But it is also a humbling verse to think about.

Do I really believe what this verse says?  What are the things I have believed can cause God to turn on me?  If this is true, where is God when I feel so alone?

Sometimes my brain can't wrap itself around the message even while my heart longs to swim in the grace that flows in this verse.

Nothing, like literally nothing, that I can know of or only can imagine or haven't even heard of, can take me away from Him.  Not the pain in my heart of watching others suffer, the decay of my body, the struggle with pride and fear, the comfort of this life, the struggles of this life, wars and instability, my negative self talk, abuse that still haunts....nothing!

Paul writes that he is "persuaded" or convinced of this fact.  Am I?

I haven't been.  Somewhere there is still this thought that although God is good, if I am not good, well, He might not want me.  I would be a let down.  I smirk as I write those words because nothing has been hidden between Him and I.  It isn't like a blind date or that show "Who the Bleep Did I Marry?"  He knew me long before I knew Him.  He loved me long before I could love.  He wanted me before I wanted Him, with all my bruises and scars, He wanted me.

So, I haven't been convinced, but I am willing to be.  I want to be!  I want to be so sure of His love that there is no hesitation.  That instead of pulling back from Him when I stumble, I run to Him-the only refuge I have ever known.

This may be my meditation for a while.  I am still gnawing on the verse, absorbing it slowly.  It is a mouthful, even if you can sing it in one breath.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Carnival: Community

Image
Blog Carnival: Community Community is getting to be a buzzword that hardly seems recognizable.  It has become permanently connected with a metrosexual worship leader at the hip church which has an outreach into some impoverished place.  But is that community? Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's social networking site.  Did you know that there are more than 300 million active users and that 50% of their active users (returned to the site in the last 30 days) log on to Facebook in any given day and that the average user has 130 friends on the site? Is that community? Do we really have a community or do we talk so much about it and request friends by the busload because we desire it intensely? We were made for community.  Creator said it was not good for that first man to be alone.  Even Creator was not alone.  We need to walk with others.  We need our village.  We need them to not only walk with us a...
Read more

He's Calling

Image
I didn't sleep well last night. I kept waking up, wanting to write. Those nights are annoying, particularly when I am working 12 hours the next day so I have no business getting out of bed to write. But here is the thing that kept bugging me...what if God is calling us not to greatness, but to smallness? Yeah, weird thing to keep a person awake, huh? Our group that went to the Leadership Summit are praying for ways that we can put what we learned into practice. Look around your neighborhood-there is so much need. Look around your coworkers-enough need to depress you. Look around the world-so much need it can paralyze. And then I think about this thing with callings... What if it isn't about being called to a thing, but to be like Him? What if it doesn't matter where I am or what I do but how I do it? What if His only desire is for me to respond to this broken world as He does? Right where I am? Jesus stopped to love the kids, he held up important people to talk to a woman, ...
Read more

The Reason for the Season

Image
This post is participating in today's blog carnival on the word LOVE.  To read other posts, click here . As all my friends texted holiday wishes this Christmas, one stood out.  This one seemed to go against all the "Keep Christ in Christmas" and "Jesus is the reason for the season" bumper stickers.  This text said simply, U r the reason 4 the season. At first I thought she wrote it incorrectly, so I read it again looking for the typo.  But, there wasn't one. That's when it hit me: without me, there wouldn't be a need for Christmas. Ok, so that sounds somewhat egocentric, but hang in there with me.  God is this crazy amazing being made of love.  It is out of that crazy, amazing love that he chose to step into flesh, to show us that God does love us and that he didn't abandon us to the evil that surrounds us, to bring us back to this relationship.  God, the first and greatest lover, pursues us, rescues us.  O...
Read more