Nothing Can Pull You Away

This is a real letter, written to real people who were afraid. And what frightened them most was this: that one day, after enough mistakes, God would finally have had enough of them and would let go.

So Paul, who loved them, picked up his pen.

Here is what he wanted them to know.

If God is for you, he wrote, then who could ever be against you? Think about it, little one. If the One who made the stars is on your side, who is left big enough to win against him? Nobody who has ever been, and nobody who ever will be.

God did not even hold back his own Son. He gave him. He gave the dearest treasure of his heart, just to come and find you and bring you home.

So now ask yourself this. If he would do that, would he really give up on you over a bad day? Over a mistake? Over a hundred mistakes?

He would not.

When you do something wrong, there is a voice that whispers, "Now you've done it. Now he'll send you away." But God leans down close, closer than that voice, and he says, "Who are you listening to? You are mine. I have loved you from the start, and I am not going to stop."

Then Paul asked the biggest question of all.

What could ever pull you away from God's love?

Could trouble, or being afraid? Could being hungry, or tired, or all alone in the dark? Could the day you feel like nobody wants you?

None of it can.

And Paul, who had lived through most of that list himself, leaned in and said something brave. I am sure of this, he wrote. I am completely sure.

Death cannot do it, though death is the thing that scares us most, and neither can life with all its hard days. Nothing up high in the sky can do it, and nothing down deep in the ground, and nothing that already happened, and nothing still coming. In all the wide world God ever made, there is not one single thing that can reach in and pull you out of his arms.

Because his arms are stronger than all of it put together.

You are held, and you are held because he will not let go.

And the reason the door is shut against everything that wants to steal you away is a name. Jesus. He came down into all of it, the death and the dark and the being alone, and he came out the other side still holding you. He went through the worst of it so that nothing in the worst of it could ever keep you from coming home.

That love has already taken hold of you. It has you today, tighter than your own two hands could ever hold, and one day you will know him closer still, with no more dark in the way.