How Much More?
“What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?”
- Romans 8:31-32
Dear friends, I write this to you in advance of Spring Break while we continue in the season of Lent. The verse above was cited in the Lenten devotion we are reading at Holy Spirit by Henri Nouwan (if you have not picked one up, we still have a few).
The “how much more so” type of phrase shows up in various ways and places in scripture to make the point of how valuable we are to God and how much we can be assured that God will take care of us. Another wonderful example is from Matthew 6: “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” The season of Lent is fertile with possible themes and nuances all meant to bring us closer to the hope we have in Jesus. A foundation for them all is the promise that we matter to God above all else.
This high-minded promise, though, can seem removed and remote in the context of our daily life. Is God with us in the mundane? What about in the traffic on the way to work, the challenges and unexpected events we face throughout the day, the concern over what we will have for dinner when we get home, the anxiety around paying bills, the complicated discernment of how to get children to numerous afterschool activities every day, the problem of not being able to fall asleep…and so on? Every one of these examples are things I have heard from you all just this past week. Is the creator of the universe and ruler of all things interested and/or present in these mundanities?
Yes.
A million times, yes.
This is at the heart of God coming into the world as one of us to live a human life amongst us. God is absolutely on the mountaintops. He is also at the dinner table. If God can take care of the mundane lives of the birds, how much more can we be assured we are cared for in all things? If God is for us then God’s love is the last word in all things. In fact, we walk this Lenten season toward the fulfillment of all things through a love that reaches all the way down into suffering to assure us there is no place too low for God, even those moments that may seem mundane. So rest and hope dear friends for where you are God is there as well.
We love you and God loves you,
Josh Condon+