A Difficult Gift To Grasp

A Difficult Gift to Grasp

I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.

Romans 8:38

John of Kronstadt was a nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox priest, born on October 19, 1829—a time when alcohol abuse was rampant. None of the priests ventured out of their churches to help the people. They waited for the people to come to them. John, compelled by love, went out into the streets. People said he would lift the hungover, foul-smelling people from the gutter, cradle them in his arms, and say to them, “This is beneath your dignity. You were meant to house the fullness of God.”^a

What a powerful message! And truth be told, you don’t have to be on skid row to hear it. We are all in need of a continual reminder of God’s love for us. And if we struggle more than most with feelings of inadequacy, we need it all the more.

Susan, married just under a year, came to us with her husband, Don, because she repeatedly questioned her worth, her dignity. “Sometimes I just don’t know how Don can love me,” she would say. “I feel so guilty; like I don’t deserve to have such a good husband.”

Jonah would have understood Susan’s feelings of inadequacy. When God called Jonah to preach to the city of Nineveh, Jonah ran away. And when a storm threatened to capsize the boat he was on, Jonah knew immediately whose fault the storm was. “Throw me into the sea,” he said, “and it will become calm” (Jonah 1:12). Only when he was trapped in the belly of the great fish did Jonah stop running and face up to God. Yet when he went to Nineveh and they repented, he again withdrew.

Sometimes love is a difficult gift to grasp. Like Susan, some of us fear we are not lovable—to our spouse or even to God. And some of us, like Jonah, cannot fathom why God would choose us to love. That is why Paul reminds us in this passage of Romans that nothing can separate us from the love of God.^b

It is not the most lovable individuals who stand more in need of love, but the most unlovable.

—Ashley Montagu

^a 135

^b 136