with excerpts from Ordinary Grace (William Kent Krueger)
In his novel, Ordinary Grace, William Kent Krueger tells about a preacher at the funeral service of a homeless man whose identity nobody knew. The preacher reads the Twenty-Third Psalm, and then from Romans:
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Most of us feel (from time to time) very separated, and that we travel alone, or lonely, or alongside loneliness. The preacher, though, understood this human condition, and continued:
“We believe too often that on the roads we walk we walk alone. Which is never true. Even this man who is unknown to us was known to God and God was his constant companion. God never promised us an easy life. He never promised that we wouldn’t suffer, that we wouldn’t feel despair and loneliness and confusion and desperation. What he did promise was that in our suffering we would never be alone. And though we may sometimes make ourselves blind and deaf to his presence he is beside us and around us and within us always. We are never separated from his love. And he promised us something else, the most important promise of all. That there would be surcease. That there would be an end to our pain and our suffering and our loneliness, that we would be with him and know him, and this would be heaven. This man, who in life may have felt utterly alone, feels alone no more. This man, whose life may have been days and nights of endless waiting, is waiting no more. He is where God always knew he would be, in a place prepared. And for this we rejoice” (page 71).
Never alone, which means it is not for me to say, I believe in God, the Father Almighty (even faith is a gift), but, I belong to God the Father Almighty.
If only we could remember. And share it with those who have not yet heard. Of such love.