Lately there have been an accumulation of circumstances--really, really distressing, disturbing, perplexing ones--that have made me realize the following (again): "Either I really believe all this stuff I've been blathering on about, and it really works, or life henceforth is going to be pretty miserable."

So instinctively this morning I went (where else?) to Romans 8, this time in the Amplified Version. One way of looking at the last several verses is as a kind of insurance contract, covering every possible contingency. "Trust me," says the agent, "whatever happens, you're covered." (It especially comes out sounding that way in the Amplified.)

So, in vs. 35: "Who shall ever separate us from Christ's love? Shall suffering and affliction and tribulation? Or calamity and distress? Or persecution, or hunger, or destitution, or peril, or sword?"

Then, in vs. 38-39: "For I am persuaded beyond doubt--am sure--that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening, nor thing to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation[emphasis mine] will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Anyhow, just sitting for maybe 45 minutes this morning mulling over those words, and the ones just before them, did me a world of good. Yes, thought I, it's faith we're talking about here: actually "seeing" the unseen so that it begins to become more real, or just as real, as these temporary circumstances. If God's love is in me and is working--is making it all turn out okay, protecting me, is showing me what to do, is comforting and strengthening me as needed, etc., etc., etc.,--in the middle of every single situation as described above, then all, definitely, is well, and will be well.