And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
– Romans 8:38-39 NLT
On any given day when we turn on the news we are bombarded by images of destruction, chaos and devastation. Sometimes these images show the effects of natural disasters and those ones are heartbreaking enough. But the really super-disturbing news stories are the ones about people hurting people.
We find ourselves asking, “What is going ON?!” and then afterwards, we can feel totally overwhelmed by how big the problems are- depressed, hopeless or, even worse, drawn to engage with the darkness that surrounds us.
BUT … The Bible teaches us that when we let God’s love BLAZE within us, we have no reason to be overwhelmed by the state of the world around us.
Jesus is described as being both ‘LIFE’ and ‘LIGHT.’ John 1:5 actually says “the Life was Light to live by” and “The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out.” (MSG). This LIGHT of Jesus is no dim, bedside lamp kinda light! We are talking about a blazing, super-super-bright!
Because of this … we have every reason to be 100% confident that God’s love can and will bring light to the darkness in our world.
So, how about this … next time the darkness we see around us overwhelms us, let’s take a moment to remember exactly how bright the love of Jesus can BLAZE. Let’s make a conscious decision to imagine the streets of our local cities glowing “forever bright!”