Thursday, August 03, 2006

It's Who knows you

Romans 8:35-37

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or peril or sword? Just as it is written; ‘For your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”

Think of being persecuted-ridiculed for your beliefs. The taunting, the snickers, the false politeness extended to you in order to gain your trust only to humiliate you. Your sadness at being ridiculed, misunderstood; your sorrow for those who don’t yet see the beauty of the Savior; your own doubt, all which floods over you in heart and mind.
Think of being humiliated: a debate in which you fail miserably in defending the faith, a false accusation which is believed as truth, a private truth revealed for all to see and mock.
Think of being so hungry that you can barely sleep, yet upon waking having nothing to put in your mouth. Of dreaming of food and waking to bare shelves.
Think of running to avoid the bombs, the gunshots, the bayonet. Finding a safe place to hide, only to realize you’ve been discovered. Wondering why you are pursued, what you have done to deserve such hatred.

In all these circumstances you fear: for your life, your safety, for your faith, your sanity. In all these circumstances you sorrow and weep, for your own pain and that of your pursuer. You worry, perhaps, or are “concerned”. You think and think how this could be happening, about why it is happening. You wonder if you could have done anything differently in order to avoid all this. You long to hear from loved ones. You worry about them. Try as you might you can’t figure out what to do. You wonder when it will end. When life will return to normal, when rescue will arrive.
The circumstances of life as you once knew them are utterly gone; there is no longer any certainty, no longer any rest, no longer any joy.

But in the midst of all this chaos and disruption you overwhelmingly conquer! How you may wonder, do I conquer, overwhelmingly, in death, in sorrow, in fear, in horror? The simple answer is you overwhelmingly conquer because you are loved by God. It is God’s way. He has always cared for those whom He loves. It really is Who you know, or more precisely, Who knows you!
Because He loves you and because you are His, you will come through death to New Life. You will come through persecutions, vindicated and righteous. You will come through famine and sit down at a Marriage Feast. You will come through humiliation and nakedness to be seated in God’s Kingdom, dressed in the robes of Jesus Christ.
All the horrors of chaos, sin and death are only passageways to home for the one loved of God. This is the genuine view of life as seen from the ultimate vantage point of Heaven.