My life passage is Isaiah 61:1-4.

Powerful? Yes. Purposeful? Absolutely. But, on nights like this…when grief grabs at my gut and anguish atrophies every muscle of faith I can muster…I don’t care about power or purpose. 

I just want God to pick out a different life passage for me.

Please.

Why is it that in order to bind up the brokenhearted, I must know what it means to have my own heart shattered?

And, to comfort all who mourn, I must know what it means to bawl my guts out on the bedroom floor?

And, to restore the places long devastated, I must know what it means to sit among the ruins?

Because, in order for me to fully proclaim these things…

I must also fully bear them.

“What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:31-32)

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ ” (Romans 8:35-36)

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 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 8:37-39)