I have been holding off on starting to write devotionals, I
mean I have really been dragging my feet on this thing. There is a reason for
that, it is because I cannot get my mind past the very first words from the
second Scripture reading that we used on Sunday morning (Romans 8:31-37). The
reading begins with “What then are we to say about these things,” and that is
all I can think and feel right now – what then ARE we to say about these
things? What is there to say? What can be said? I haven’t been able to move
past those nine simple words for days.
This morning I woke up and started thinking about it again
and for some reason, let’s call it the Holy Spirit, my mind finally decided to
finish that verse – “What then are we to say about these things, if God is for
us who can be against us?” It finally dawned on me that the right words aren’t
even necessary, for God is with us and God is for us. God, who knows our
deepest thoughts, our deepest needs, even without words. As it says a few
verses earlier in Romans (8:26-27) “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our
weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit
intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart,
knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the
saints according to the will of God.” We do not need the words because the God
who is for us, the God who loves us, the God who searches us, hears us even
when we cannot speak.
This is a frightening time for all of us and there aren’t
really the right words to talk about it, but God is with us in and through each
and every moment of it. As Paul says in Romans 8:37, “For I am convinced that
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor powers, 39nor 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.” And maybe that is enough – maybe just knowing that God is with us, and
for us, knowing that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love in this life,
knowing that not even this current crisis can take us away from God’s love,
maybe that is truly enough and words aren’t even necessary.
Let us pray, Gracious God, who knows and searches our hearts and souls, hear our
prayers, our worries, our needs, even when we do not have words to speak them.
Speak to our hearts and our minds so that we might know that nothing can ever
separate us from your love. Strengthen all people in this time with your Spirit
and bind us together as a community, as a nation, and a world united in your
love. Amen.
