Copyright © 2026 Women of the ELCA. Reprint permission is granted for use in Women of the ELCA units, clusters/conferences and synodical women’s organizations provided each post is reproduced in its entirety. If you enjoy this resource, Donate Now.
Holy and abiding Presence, out of the depths, I cry to you! Like so many before me, I wonder: “How long?” “Why me?” “Why them?” “Why now?” “Where are you?” and “Why have you forsaken us?” If I were to rend my garments each time these thoughts come, I would no longer have any whole clothes. While I am not in despair every moment, every day, I am aware of the grief and pain around me, swelling and ebbing like a tide, like breathing. I remember Romans 8:38, and listen for the whisper, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.”
At each baptismal service, we renounce the forces that oppose your Divine Will. We say no to them with our whole hearts, our full selves. We reject them. Yet they remain at work in ways beyond our understanding, sometimes beyond human recognition. Those forces create division, stir up dissention, stamp out curiosity and perpetuate injustice by sustaining the feeling of indignity. Whether they are spiritual forces, powers and principalities or internal struggles with sin, again I renounce them. I cling to this solid rock: Nothing can separate us from the love of God.
This message is excerpted from “Nothing can separate us.” by Julia Seymour in the May/June 2024 Gather magazine. Today we commemorate the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession, 1530; and Philip Melanchthon, renewer of the church, 1560.