35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor 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.

Romans 8:35-39

Twenty-one of our Christian brothers were brutally beheaded by ISIS yesterday. There on the coast of the Libyan shore they were marched, in orange, knelt down, and were killed by monsters in black.

“Why did you forsake them,” we can scream at God. Christ, on the cross, wondered the same.

But he and we know deep down that we are not separated from our Lord. We are not promised an easy path through this world into the next. Disease, pain, torture, and death might plague us here, but we are passing through.

I find more and more Christians worried about the future. They see the world turned upside down in their own country and evil marching abroad. But our Lord Jesus said to worry about today. Tomorrow can take care of itself. He also told us to put our trust in him. Sometimes it is hard to do so, but we must.

I have written before about not letting your heart be troubled and I tell you again, you must not let your heart be troubled by the things you hear and see. We can choose to be happy. We can choose to be optimists.

As I wrote then, let me write now. I can tell you in a world where so many politicize everything, we yell at each other, and every hill is a hill on which to die, whether you choose to believe or not there is good and there is evil and there is a man upstairs who has a plan that while we may not know it we can be assured that all things, even in the pit of the various hells on this present earth, yes all things do work for the good of those called according to his purpose. He brings forth water from rocks and bread from heaven and you and me from the dust of the earth, stitching us together in our mothers’ wombs.

So let not your heart be troubled. The sun still shines. The smiles are still there. The good graces between neighbors still exist. Bad things will always and have always happened. But love and good and right prevail even in the madness of the present age.

I, too, “am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor 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.”

Maranatha.