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Trusting, Clinging

Reading: Romans 8:31-39

Romans 8:35a – “Who will separate us from Christ’s love?”

Photo credit: Nick Fewings

In the second half of our Romans 8 passage, Paul asks some great rhetorical questions. He begins with this familiar and frequently asked question: “If God is for us, who is against us?” In our faith heart, we say “no one!” With God on our side, we are confident, assured, ready to take on the world. Why, God didn’t even spare his own son! God gave his son’s life for our lives. Boy is that some kind of love. And then the trouble comes, the distress sets in, the harassment ramps up… Our sure and confident faith can begin to crack in these hard moments.

When we allow our negative human emotions to win the day or when we allow temptation to lead to sin, we open ourselves up to having a charge leveled or a conviction delivered. In that moment, as God looks down on us, caught in distrust or sin, Paul reminds us that Jesus “is at God’s right hand.” He sits in the seat of judgment, not to judge, but to “plead our case.” Jesus walked in our shoes, so to speak. He understands our struggles, fear, doubts. He pleads our case.

In verse 35 Paul asks this question: “Who will separate us from Christ’s love?” He then lists a bunch of “what’s.” These are things. In and of themselves, they cannot do anything. So maybe the “who” that Paul has in mind is us – you and me. When trouble, distress, harassment… or death, injustice, abuse, loneliness, disease… falls upon us, do we stand on, trust in, lean into, and rely upon Christ’s love? Do we hold sure to our faith, believing that in and through Jesus Christ we will have a “sweeping victory?” Yes, Paul is correct: “Nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus.” May we live each day trusting in this truth, clinging to it when necessary.

Prayer: Lord God, you are faithful and true. Your love and presence are constant and sure. By the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us, turn us again and again to these truths. Over and over, help us to stand upon them. Thank you, Lord. Amen.


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Trust and Belief

Reading: Job 2:7-10

Job 2:7 – “The Adversary… struck Job with sores from the sole of his foot to the top of his head.”

We enter Job’s story at the point of his second “test.” In chapter 1 Job loses all his livestock and all of his sons and daughters. Job says, “The Lord has given; the Lord has taken; bless the Lord’s name.” Job is known as the wisest and most faithful man in all the world. The Adversary’s argument is this is because God has blessed Job. Yet when all of this was lost, Job remained faithful to God.

Test two comes next: “The Adversary… struck Job with sores from the sole of his foot to the top of his head.” Afflict Job himself, the logic goes, then he will curse God. Covered top to bottom in oozing sores, Job sits on an ash pile and scrapes his sores. Job’s wife sees his condition and says, “Are you still clinging to your integrity? Curse God, and die.” (Some translations read, “Bless God, and die.”) She believes Job is being assaulted by God. Her life has also completely fallen apart. Likely because Job has sinned – which he hasn’t. She thinks God is against Job. She’s saying, ‘Enough already!’

Job tells her she is being foolish. He is right with God and he knows it. He asks her, “Will we receive good from God but not also receive bad?” Put another way: ‘If God does reward and punish, we must accept it all, must we not?’ Job’s trust in God is sure. His suffering is unjust and undeserved. Yet God is God: all-powerful and all-knowing. Job does not understand why he is suffering. His understanding of God and how God normally works is the same as his wife’s: be good and be blessed by God, do evil and be cursed by God. And here he sits in a pile of ashes, covered in oozing sores. Job chooses trust and belief over his reality. In those moments when life makes no sense to us or to our faith, may we, as Job did, trust faith and belief in God.

Prayer: Lord God, at times we will find ourselves where Job did – life making no sense. What’s happening doesn’t fit our understanding of you or of how things “should” work. In these times and places of disorientation, draw us to you. Help us to trust and believe in your wisdom that is beyond ours, in your plan that goes far beyond our vision, and in your love that is much greater than we could ever imagine. Amen.