I did something a little weird today. I put on my wedding dress and laid on my bed in silence. 

In my Bible reading, I’ve been parked in Jeremiah. Partially because that’s what my Lent study has me reading, but also because in my slow read-through of the Bible that’s currently where I am. Jeremiah is an interesting book but one of the things that has stuck out this time was Jeremiah’s use of prophetic object lessons. For example, God tells Jeremiah to bury his belt by the river and then a few days later Jeremiah digs it up and discovers that the belt is rotten. God used that to explain the futility of having any other gods before Him.

And that’s what God did in my life today. See, I spent the larger part of the morning in a sackcloth and ashes mood, feeling the weight of my sin and having a hard time approaching God. After some afternoon rest, I meekly went upstairs to the quiet. I felt unworthy to approach Him and then He whispered to me and told me to put my wedding dress on. I bought my dress from BHLDN so I got it a week after I tried it on and usually it’s hanging in the back of my closet just waiting for September. But when God speaks, I try to listen. So I grabbed it and put it on and sat on my bed feeling a little silly. So I asked God, what was up. And He reminded me that as a part of His Church, I am His Bride. 

Friends, if we know God - we are His Bride! It’s amazing! He loves us, not because of anything we have done - we can’t earn it but we also can’t muck it up! His love supersedes our accomplishments and also our failures. In the midst of this profound reminder of His love, He also reminded me of hope. 

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. 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? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 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.” 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 8:18-39

Friends, we have hope. Whether your anxiety and fear are COVID-19 related or you’re suffering the repercussions of your sin - we have hope in Christ. NOTHING can separate us from His love. We are His Bride.