Romans 8:35-39: Nothing
Thursday, August 8, 2024
What can cut us off from the love of Christ? Hardships, crises, distress, lack of food or clothes, threats or violence? No, we move through all of these things by the power of the Christ. For I am certain of this: neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, or height or depth, nor any created thing, can ever come between us and the love of God . . . God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This version of verses from Romans appears in today’s Noonday prayer in THE DIVINE HOURS: PRAYERS FOR SUMMERTIME by Phyllis Tickle. It reminds us that in times of trouble there is nothing more we need say or think. There is nothing more we need do but attempt to live a life that communicates this belief to others. At times, this Love of Christ is lived in our compassion as we abide with a loved one who is in pain. At other times, it is lived in our witness to injustice. At still other times, it is demonstrated when we must rebuke or step away from a situation or relationship. Always it is experienced by our enemies when we intercede for them in Jesus’ name.
This Love of Christ is complex yet simple. It is difficult for us to walk away from our inherited and learned behaviors that lead us away from Christ. It is simple to put all anxieties aside and take on the new robe of Christ that empowers us to follow the new law, the Law of Love.
When we are in doubt, we can always turn to scripture, to the Christ-Written-as Story-for-Us. When we open scripture, lines of The Story leap out at us and always these lines show us the way we must take, The Way, The Love of Christ. Nothing must keep us from this Love.
Tickle, Phyllis. THE DIVINE HOURS: PRAYERS FOR SUMMERTIME. New York: Doubleday, 2000. Print.
A Favorite from August 20, 2008.
Image from: https://walkingthebereanroad.com/2013/08/19/because-he-loved-me-first/
The Noontimes 