WE HAVE LOOKED at the power of things present to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We now look at the second: “things to come” (Rom. 8:38). The apprehensions about things to come turn into fears, and fears become all-pervasive as nameless anxiety. Those fears turned anxieties separate us from the love of Christ—and do so with religious people.
A very intelligent and religious woman told me of her minister husband’s running off with the wife of a deacon. She married the deacon, and for a while they were happy—as happy as two people could be under those circumstances. But now she was filled with nameless fears, mostly fears of the future. The reason was simple. A religious woman she was “in religion,” but not in Christ. Deep down she was really “in herself,” and being in herself she felt insecure. She began to wonder what would happen to her when her physical attractiveness faded? Could she hold her new husband? Would she lose him as she lost the first? These are natural fears to one who is in herself, with nothing backing and sustaining her except herself and nothing within her except her decaying self. The remedy was simple: surrender to Christ. She did, and immediately her fears vanished—she was in eternal life now and hence secure. Time could do nothing to her. She belonged to Christ, and time and eternity belonged to Him, and hence to her.
I picked up my morning paper and under “Let’s Explore Your Mind” the statement was made: “Once you hit forty, there’s nothing to look forward to! Right or Wrong?” The published answer was: “Wrong. Each middle-ager is a pioneer in the new ‘prime of life’ assured by recent advances in medicine and technology.” It is an earth-bound answer.
O Lord God, if science and technology are the answers to growing mental and physical decay, we are boosted in the beginning but caught in the end—caught by death. But in Thee we are deathless, therefore we are not bounded by time or bound by time. We are free in Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The earth-bound answers to life don’t answer—the Eternal must be in the answer.
