What Can Separate Us?

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? …

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 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. Romans 8:31-36, 37-39

One of the biggest things that separates me from the new Americans I have worked among for so many years is the experience of suffering. Oh, sure, I have my own experience with that; but I have never been in a war, never starved, never risked my life fleeing my country. Even some of the children I work among have had these experiences. And it has changed them in profound ways.

And yet, for all the distance of experience between us, we find hope in the same Lord—the one who will never, ever allow those evils to separate us from him. He is the one who came into our world to suffer and die for us. He left his home in heaven to become one of us—and yet, not someone accepted and wanted, at least by the leadership of his country. He himself lived as a refugee as a child; and as an adult, he knew hunger and loss, trouble and fear. And finally, he gave himself into death to rescue the people he loved from the power of evil.

Now that Jesus has risen from the dead, there is no evil he will allow to separate us from him. He goes with us wherever we go—the source of our life, closer than close. And he will bring us home to live with him forever in his kingdom—our true home, from which we will never need to fear exile. We will be home with him forever.

Dear Lord, when we fear suffering, be close to us and show us the way. Amen.

By Dr. Kari Vo