We saw yesterday that death cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Can life separate us? Life can be a more effective separator than death. You can become afraid of life, step out of it, retreat into yourself, and disintegrate. If you become a self-preoccupied person, you will be separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Life can separate you from that love, if life can induce you to attempt to live life in yourself.
This retreat from life into yourself can easily be accomplished. Fear of life and failure can induce you to do it. A Chinese student from Singapore at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor began to get low marks in mathematics. Out of shame and a sense of inferiority he hid himself for four years in the attic of the Methodist church and lived there as a complete recluse. Fear and inferiority drove him in on himself and separated him from the love of God, the love of his fellow man, and the love of himself. When he came out at the end of four years, a wreck, he said: “You have to face up to truth—to reality. Four years ago I was a coward, but today I have learned to live again.”
This student’s retreat away from life was dramatic. But those who retreat out of life and responsibility in a covered, less dramatic way, are just as devastated inwardly as this Chinese student. In fact, Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist, said: “There is a difference between the psychology of Freud and myself. He finds the basis of neurosis in the past, in childhood. I find it in the present. I ask, what is the responsibility from which this patient is retreating? Why is he dodging out of life into illness?”
If we stay in the love of God in Christ, we have learned to face up to life; we are afraid of nothing, for in Him we are adequate for anything. As long as we stay in Him, life cannot separate us.
THE PRAYER
O blessed, blessed Security. I am afraid of nothing that life can bring, for I am not afraid of life itself. If I hide myself in Life, then what can life do to me? I cannot only bear everything that life brings, I can use it. I thank Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY
I shall not hide in church towers or ivory towers. I shall run into Thy victory and be safe.
Get your copy of In Christ: Devotions for Every Day of the Year from our store here.
Subscribe to get this in your inbox daily and please share this link with friends.