Nothing can separate

I’ve been thinking often over the last few days and weeks about the last three verses of the magnificent eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome:

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.

So much of life is a gradual (or painfully, wrenchingly abrupt) process of being separated from things. We are separated from the past, from experiences and relationships that form us as people. As time marches on, the memories fade or become cloudy, and we feel them slipping away. I have a general recollection of what it was like to be the father of four-year-old twins—of the delights and heartaches peculiar to that particular stage of my life and theirs, but the specifics are growing increasingly difficult to recall. My relationship with nearly 14 year olds is of a different character and quality to that earlier stage of my life—a stage of life that I am increasingly feeling separated from.  This is true for all of us, I suspect. We are, in many ways, products of our pasts, yet the past is always slipping away.