NOTHING Thursday, January 23, 2014 On the way to her house, a particular scripture came to mind. The last time I’d read scripture to this dear elderly lady whose days are numbered by inoperable cancer, her facial expression changed from distress to peace and I saw the Word come to light in her eyes that began to fill with tears. I wasn’t sure why this particular passage had come to mind but I couldn’t get it off my mind. I was soon to find out why. My favorite Bible is a small one, about 4x6, that I’ve had for twenty-six years. It’s brown leather and when the binding gave way some years ago I replaced the spine with black duct tape. It’s a looker! Sitting with her at her kitchen table covered in a blue table “cloth,” I turned to Romans 8 and began reading slowly, deliberately. Once again, her facial expression changed, her deeply furrowed brows relaxed and her eyes focused laser-like on my Bible as they filled with tears. “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans . . . What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Christ Jesus who died - more than that, who was raised to life - is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor . . . the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Before I could even close the Bible, choking back tears she said, “I try to pray at night but the words won’t come or I can’t find the words. I want to pray. I just don’t know what to say.” There was a tone of guilt in her voice, as though God wouldn’t accept her wordless prayers. With great joy, I pointed back to the text I’d just read and said, “Isn’t this beautiful? The Bible says that, when we don’t have the words and our tears are our prayers, the Holy Spirit knows what we mean and takes those to God’s throne for us. When we can’t pray, God does our praying for us. That’s incredible, isn’t it? What’s more, if you can’t pray, even that won’t stop God from loving you. Nothing, absolutely nothing in all of creation, no thing or things, can build a barrier so strong or tall that God’s love for you can’t and won’t scale it. Not one thing. Nothing. Not even your inability to pray.” By this time, I was about to need help not crying. As I said the Bible words to her, they began to comfort and reassure me. They were coming out of my mouth then circling back around to my own ears and down into my heart. I tend to carry around this musty old bag. No one but God can see it but it’s full of guilt about my inadequacies and even some past failures that are older than my Bible. The old bag also carries around guilt about stubborn sins that seem impossible to confess before I’m neck deep in my own humanity again. Romans 8 scissors a hole in the bottom of that musty old bag and always dumps the fear in some distant sea in which I’ll never swim. No GPS from hell could ever find God’s dumping sea. Only God knows its location and God’s not telling. “You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:18-19). Beautiful thing about the Bible. It comforts those who know they’re dying sooner than later. It also comforts and reassures those of us who still hope death will be later than sooner and find ourselves, even now, swimming in a sea of grace, lost in wonder, love and praise. As hard as it can be to believe, nothing, absolutely nothing is stopping God from loving you and me, right now, in this very moment. There is nothing in the human language that can describe how nothing will ever separate us from God’s love. Nothing.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 12:16:58 +0000
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