Nothing Can Separate Us From God’s Love

“Fear distorts knowledge of the self. What we should really be afraid of is obsessing over ourselves and never getting free of ourselves! And so I say, my friends, let us set our eyes on Christ, our good, and on his saints.” Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle (1577)

It never ceases to amaze me how every week Teresa writes something that connects to my everyday life. This week I’m finding encouragement in her idea to stop thinking about myself and my fears and to think instead about Christ and his saints.

One of my favorite saints is the apostle Paul who was once Saul of Tarsus, the Jewish leader who threatened and tortured followers of Jesus until one day brilliant light surrounded him on the road to Damascus and he heard the risen Christ ask, “Saul, Saul! Why do you persecute me?” Saul rose from the ground after that experience—blinded but alive—and become an apostle of Christ.

On January 25 the church community remembers the conversation of the apostle Paul. In our Lutheran hymnal there is a prayer for the occasion which begins: “Lord God, through the preaching of your apostle Paul, you established one Church from among the nations.” Paul traveled far and wide to share the Gospel after his conversion, and I appreciate the letters he wrote to people before and after his journeys. Paul’s letter to the Romans is particularly appealing to me, especially the way he holds up the power of God’s love: “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 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.”

Teresa is wise to remind us that we should not let fear get the best of us. Instead, we need to focus on Christ, on Paul and on all the saints, living every single day of our lives in the certainty that nothing—earthquakes, illness, plane accidents, nor anything else we fear—nothing can separate us from God’s love.