^{Romans 8:26-39 Year A Lectionary Epistle Text}

²⁶Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. ²⁷And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. ²⁸We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. ²⁹For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. ³⁰And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. ³¹What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³²He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. ³⁵Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” ³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

• Together for good
• So earlier in this scripture Paul was writing that all creation is groaning with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God . . ..  To me this means that creation is waiting for us to figure life out.  Have we forgotten what creation knows deeply?  Is Paul continuing to discuss the inability of the human experience to understand the order of life set out by God? 
• Could the good that Paul speaks of be how God set up the rules of our universe?

       All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.  It is the way of the universe that there is a cycle, an undulation, or an ebb and flow to things.  We have a hard time accepting, that for as many cycles of growth there are an equal number of cycles of decay.  We love the possibility and energy of growth BUT WE CANNOT STAND FOR THINGS TO DIE.  Life constantly teaches us that death and life go hand-in-hand but we want life and abundance without the death.  Life without death would not be sustainable in this world.  1 Corinthians 15:36 uses the image of the seed saying that it must first die before anything will grow from it.  Creation is run by this rule and does not fear the death; for death is only part of the cycle new life comes once the process of death is complete and not much life can or will occur if we try to circumvent the created order of things. 

      Do we trust God?  Do we trust what the created order implies, that "all things work together for good?"  So a Christian life, rather life in general, requires an acceptance of cycles of suffering and death.  Imagine what would happen in this world if nothing ever died, how would that work?  What do we know about things that only multiply and do not die?  The scientific community has a name for this it is called cancer.  What would happen to the ocean if it only ebbed and never flowed?  What about if the sun only rose and didn't