Downpour

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any power, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38 & 39

I have been reminded of this verse several times in the last couple days. The verse by itself, is pretty fantastic. I mean, God's love for us and how NOTHING can take that away. That's pretty freaking sweet.

Today though I was shown a different way of looking at it in my search to understand God's Love in my own life and was trying to think of a good analogy of comparing this verse in the light I was shown about the verse. I stared out the living room window watching the rain clouds pass by and thought about a downpour. I mean one like the video shows up above. One that is a wall of rain, that if you are driving you have to stop, you look out your window in awe of the massive amount of water that is coming down.

If you are brave enough to exit your house into this storm, there are several ways of approaching it...

1. You can try to run through it, to avoid it, but inevitably you will get drenched.

2. You can just deal with it, try to ignore it and walk it out and of course, you will be just flooded by the rain.

3. Finally, you can avoid the rain all together by either not entering it at all or even going out with an umbrella.

But no matter how you enter (or not enter) this storm, you cannot stop the rain. Ignore it, run from it, avoid it, use barriers against it, whatever, those choices do not stop it from raining.

I took this analogy and tied it to the verse of God's love for us. His perfect love for us. That no matter how we treat His love, by ignoring it, going against it, avoiding it, side-stepping it, and so on... we cannot stop His love. Because He will pour it down on us, His love, His grace, His mercy and there is no wall, no barrier, no chains that have been created that can stop it.

Nothing.

So then it is up to us to accept it, to embrace it, to run in it, to soak it up, to pass it on, to invite others in, to let it drench us.