I sit down to write this post in response to an invitation to bring this Truth into focus. Couple this with my human awareness that so many people feel abandoned by God in this world of rumours, accusations, disease etc. Even in the church people are frequently without hope or sense of balance between life and death. – ie living for Christ as a Light on a lampstand, and dying to self that the Holy Spirit may flourish. As I surrender my whirling, yet wondering, mind, to the Truth in my Heart, I realise how true the statement above has become for me…. especially over the last six and a half years.
The thing that always convicted me of being separate from God, was my mind running away from my heart, and protecting myself from pain. Do you experience this? But I realise how far the love of God has brought me in accepting the suffering of my life, step by step, and enabling me to stand in love and still serve. And in this I find joy and unity and grace, in place of the mourning for loss.
Yet the serving is not in itself the answer to our need for God’s love. If the serving is ‘dead-works’ done because we ‘have to’ (the leaven of the Pharisees as St Paul calls it), there is no Spiritual blessing, nor healing of our broken lovelessness. Thus if we are doing our ‘good’ in self-righteousness, the other may still receive a blessing, but we do not. However if we confess to the Lord our lack of love, even our coldness, and open this darkened heart to Him, then we are giving the burden to the Creator of all, the Source of all Love, the keeper of the Kingdom. And having done that – still go forward IN FAITH to love and serve, then we receive what we need to really bless the other, through His Presence with us.
You and I in our nakedness are simply a reminder to the other of their own nakedness and need….maybe leaving them emptier spiritually than before we tried to ‘do them good’. But when we are clothed in the Armour and Love of God, we know ourselves one with the other and with Christ on the Cross, but we go in His Resurrection Strength in His Spirit, obedient to the Father’s love and purpose. Thus in whatever we are doing we carry that Resurrection Hope within our Heart.
In this way we diminish and He grows greater, to quote John the Baptist….His Spirit purifying and excluding from our thoughts all self-will and self-satisfaction. In this way you and I grow in vision and Practice of the truth that ‘Nothing can separate us from the Love of God’. Only by grace can we enter the Kingdom. We need to say our daily, hourly, minute by minute, ‘Yes’ to surrendering all burdens to Him and knowing His grace in us enables us to bear ‘Emmanuel (God is with us)’, in abject poverty of spirit, and total obedience to the Father in His Love. No glory to us, all glory to Him, which is very freeing.
Lord we know, for Your Word is true, that NOTHING can separate us from Your Love, alive through the Cross. Yet Lord ‘we believe, help our unbelief’ when we are tempted by these hard times and help us look to Your Cross, Your trust in the Father, and know ourselves in Your loving Heart, reaching out according to Your will in forgiveness and mercy. Amen