God Is For Us

How do you know when someone is for you?

Maya Angelou famously said, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

This is true. And some feelings are stickier than others.

I remember a time in sixth grade (ugh, middle school... am I right?) when my supposed friend group put me in my place. I was part of the "cool kids" group, but squarely at the bottom of the social order. I can still feel the sting of the words: "The only reason you made the team is because you're big." Which, I knew my size full well as my mom often and affectionately called me "husky." But, the cool kids did not mean that. They meant that I had no skills or real value. This was a deliberate attempt to keep me from believing that I had any real belonging in the group. The message was clear, “We are not for you, and we never really were.”

There is a reason this memory remains so sticky: shame is a powerful feeling.

Shame is, in many ways, the opposite of joy. Shame is the experience of feeling unwanted and of another being against you. Joy, on the other hand, is the experience of being with someone who is glad to be with you and for you. Thankfully, joy is more powerful than shame—we just have to experience it.

I hope you'll join us this Sunday as we continue our summer series, The Cross and the Colosseum: How the Heart of Romans Is the Hope for the World. We will continue setting the stage for Romans 8 and unpack what it means that "God is for us" (8:31).

The good news is that God is always glad to be with us because God is for us. As the late Catherine LaCugna wrote, "God for us is who God is as God."