Stuck on You

On the way to my volunteer day I always stop to get a soda at the local grab-n-go-gas-station. This morning as I was driving I was also listening to Chuck Swindoll preach on Romans 8. This chapter has a special place in my heart. Mostly because it comes before the thorny chapter 9. I tend to want to call an end the letter to the Romans with those final beatific words of 8, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither 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.” 

I pulled into the station mid-way through Pastor Swindoll’s message, and turning the car off left me mid-thought that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. I believe this. I have overcome some lies in my life and reached a place where I know that I know, that even I am not bigger than this love. Even I can not do anything so bad that God would cease to love me. But what stuck with me (pardon the pun) this day was that nothing can separate me from His love. Pondering what this might look like, feel like, I went on in to the station to grab my soda.

You know it always happens to me this way – in the mundane moments of my life, God shows up. And there He was at the soda fountain. More specifically, at the lids. Uh huh…you’re already there, aren’t you? You know, if you have ever purchased a soda at a gas station, that there is simply no separating those stinking lids! You’ve got one hand full of the soda, the other clutching keys, change, and straw, and you’ve got to single handedly unstick one single lid from the factory run sleeve of plastic flanged nemeses! It can’t be done. Two hands are required, long-suffering necessary, and firmly in place, a mind that is completely numbed to the thought that countless other hands have touched every…single…lid. As I was struggling against the laws of nature I was grumbling that life nor death, angels nor demons, present nor future…no not ANY power in all creation could separate those fool lids from one another! And then I saw me. And then I saw God. And I rejoiced over those confounded plastic lids stuck to one another as if forged as one piece.

It’s a silly thing – I’m a silly kind of gal and that’s where the Lord meets me – but still, I hope that when you’re not sure that you know what you know, you can remember those maddening lids and be reassured that nothing…nothing… no, nothing can ever separate you from God’s love. It’s as if you were forged together as one.