Nothing Can Separate Us From His Love

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. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39

Hannah Whitall Smith, author of The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life, a book that has touched millions of people even into the twenty-first century, had many reasons to be extremely unhappy, even despairing. Four of her children died. Her husband was unfaithful and fell into a scandal that brought national humiliation and destroyed his ministry. Hannah’s three grown children rejected Christ, and Hannah suffered financial hardship and rejection, even from her own Quaker family.

Yet she was sustained by a vision of the extravagant love of Christ, which enabled her to not allow these trials to sink her faith but rather to see them as gateways to deeper dependence on God. And she chose to believe the truth of Romans 8, that nothing, absolutely nothing, could separate her from God’s love in Christ Jesus—even when her husband failed her and her grown children pursued destructive lifestyles.

She no doubt pondered the verses that come before Romans 8:38-39: Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or are hungry or cold or in danger or threatened with death? But despite all her difficulties, Hannah Whitall Smith stood on the truth that God’s love is enough. Until Hannah’s dying day, God’s love gave her the strength to serve him and teach his Word to others.

Help us, Lord of all comfort, to discover over and over again that you are enough. Empower us to choose to believe and receive your unfailing love, no matter how we are feeling or how fierce the trials we face.

I said, “Lord, thou art enough for me.” . . . I am not very well and feel what I expect thou would call “low.” But it makes no difference how I feel. He is just the same, and He is with me, and I am His, and I am satisfied.

Hannah Whitall Smith(1832–1911), American lay speaker and author