Capitoline Museum – Roman, Italy. Taylor Smith

This is probably not the way you usually start your day, but think of the most difficult challenge(s) you’ve faced during your lifetime.

While I don’t know what moments came to your mind, I can only imagine that they were events that caused your heart to ache – either due to suffering and loss, the searing pain of guilt, the boiling anger of having to chose to leave something behind, even when you desperately didn’t want to.

These hardships were most likely things that were out of your control, at least at some point. And if you’re like most of your brothers and sisters, when this challenge entered your life, you probably found yourself questioning why something like this could have ever fallen into your lap, or in the lives of those you love. Maybe your eyes instantly turned towards the heavens and you asked God, ‘Are you there? Did you really mean for it to be this way? There must be some mistake…’

But I firmly believe that God makes no mistakes, even when it seems that our life’s path is more muddy and rocky than our best hiking boots can weather. While we may not anticipate the bumps, the bruises, the landslides, we must keep on our hearts a very discerning quality: perspective.

In Romans 8, Paul says, “If God is with us, who could be against us?” 8:31
Thinking back to the greatest challenges in your life; was there ever something or someone that was greater -more powerful- than God?

Because God is in us, because He is our Father that cradles our precious lives in His warm embrace, because His strength gives us the power to endure anything … nothing can ever conquer us!

At the end of the chapter, Paul says this statement of affirmation. Like the Truth that we reflected on yesterday, I see Paul shouting this statement, living by the power of God’s love for us that he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt is true. That when God is with us, nothing evil can ever overtake us.

“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.” 8:38-39

Find strength in this Truth: there is nothing more powerful, loving and gracious than our God.