“… nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:39 NRSV

An image of the Friday November 13, 2015 siege on Paris is firmly etched in our minds now. It is of the pregnant woman hanging from a window ledge twenty feet above the street. She is clinging for dear life as she grasps the window sill and calls out for help. It must have been a torturous two minutes as she clung there reeling from the horror of what had just transpired inside the Bataclan Concert Hall. Escaping that imminent danger, she was now faced with the possibility of falling to her own death, and if not that, most assuredly the death of the child she carried in her womb. Then a surprise from within the building occurs as a compassionate man reaches out his arms for her arms … to pull her up and into the building to safety again. She and her unborn child survived that ordeal thanks to God’s grace and a man coming along at just the right time to offer the assistance she needed. It’s a blessing! That’s a remarkable “Gotcha” story.

The Apostle Paul shares with the Romans and succeeding generations of Christians the most remarkable “Gotcha” story. He tells us that “he is convinced that neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” In that listing we see situations of how we might be holding onto dear life like the pregnant woman in Paris was actually doing. We may be trying to keep our heads above water. We may be trying to hang in there when we encounter hardships and trials. We can take comfort knowing that as we feel our own strength waning, the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord has got us. Regardless of the turmoil we may be experiencing and when we feel we can no longer hold on, we can rest safely in the assurance that nothing … nothing … can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Prayer

O God, we thank You that You have got us! We thank You that nothing can separate us from Your love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.