Late fall was in the air as I started to read today’s scripture passages.  It was a Friday afternoon ending a busy week of routine and not so routine (dare I say surprising) activities.  I admitted to both a mental and a physical fatigue.  Then I read Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:31-39).  His words washed over me like a life-restoring shower.  I knew at that moment I could not improve upon the author’s genius.  So we pray together those words, which speak of the utter confidence we should have in our ever-faithful God.

Brothers and sisters:
If God is for us, who can be against us?
He did not spare his own Son
but handed him over for us all,
how will he not also give us everything else along with Him?
Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones?
It is God who acquits us.
Who will condemn?
It is Christ Jesus who died, rather, was raised,
who also is at the right hand of God,
who indeed intercedes for us.
What will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?

No.

No, in all things we conquer overwhelmingly
through Him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor present things, nor future things,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!

Such reassurances from God, takes the sting from ordinary life.

And to this my soul shouts: amen, amen, and again, amen!.