Friday, March 15, 2013

nothing

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? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
    "For your sake we are being
         killed all day long;
    we are accounted as sheep
         to be slaughtered."
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, 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.
Romans 8:31-39
- - - - -

[nothing]
    not the death
       i fear,
    or the one
       i long for;

[nothing can]
    not the life
       i sleepwalk through,
    or the one
       i fantasize about;

[nothing can separate]
    not the hubris
    that carries me
       to the top of Mt. Arrogance,
    or the skeptics
    who push me
       into the Sea of Doubt;

[nothing can separate me]
    not the foolish choices
    that tripped me up
                     yesterday,
    nor the terrors
    i imagine
                lurking in tomorrow;

nothing can keep us apart,
God-as-close-as-my-breath:
   nothing
       sheol
          nada
             gehenna
                        not a thing

                 not even

me . . .

(c) Thom M. Shuman

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