Nothing

By Matt

I read: Romans 8

I thought I knew what I was going to write about until I got to the last paragraph of this chapter:

Nothing fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing--nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable--absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

Roger Nishioka talked a lot about these verses and how important it is for us to constantly remind our students about the truth behind these words. Not making the varsity team nor SAT's nor having a hot girlfriend nor driving a fast car nor beating Call of Duty 3 on veteran nor having a great prom dress nor dating the quarterback nor getting into college nor running a 5 minute mile nor anything on earth, in space, under the ground, or in the heavens is going to keep us from the love that God has for us. And I wholeheartedly agree, that's such an important message for them to hear, maybe the second most important one we could ever tell our students, and they need to hear it a lot. Constantly.

But it's easy to get caught up in what they need to hear so I'm going to change gears for a second: having 1 kid or 100 kids in youth group; landing in a called meeting of the Session for something you/your kids did; trudging through the wasteland of lust that never seems very far off; struggling to be the person your kids think you are; failing at the juggling act that is balancing our professional lives with our relationships and our responsibilities; not reading your Bible or writing about it on the dLog; eating out for the fifteenth time this week (and it's only Tuesday); not taking Sabbath time; forgetting to return that call or email; going over budget for the year; forgetting to lock the doors on your way out of the building; and any of the other thousand things that do their best to distract, disam, defang, and dilute what we do. None of them mean a thing because of the simple fact that Jesus loves us.