I just knew him as Mr. G. A father of 10 kids. A good father of 10 kids. But the apple of his eye was Kenny. You see, Kenny was a special kid. Confined to a wheel chair. Intellectually, there was not much there. He could react to his surroundings. He knew how to smile. He knew when he was not happy. He would bellow, either his pleasure or displeasure, but not in words that were intelligible to me. And Kenny was the apple of Mr. Gillick.’s eye. He would take him on car rides. He’d feed him, change his diapers, (he was 34 when I met him), include him in every conversation, talk baseball – you name it. And when Kenny died, it left a hole that was the size of New York city in his life. You see, Mr. G. loved Kenny relentlessly. Nothing would or could separate Kenny from his love. And you crossed Kenny at your own peril, because you would be taking on Mr. G.
I tell that story because it is next to impossible for me to ever hear this reading from Paul to the Romans without thinking about Mr. G. and Kenny. His was a love that holds on – relentless, protective, fierce kind of love. And NOTHING could separate Kenny from his love. NOTHING.
That’s the kind of love that Paul knew at the END of his journey. He is writing while under house arrest in Rome, awaiting trial. So he looks back, perhaps in a moment of despair, perhaps in a moment of depression, and he asks the question that anyone who has had difficult things happen to them asks at some point of their life. “Does God’s love really hold on to us in the tough times and dark times of our journey?” “What will separate us from the love of God?” Will it be trouble or hardship that breaks the camel’s back? Or nakedness or famine or danger or the sword that will push me over the edge?” Paul has experienced all those things. All those things. Catching himself musing over what must have seemed like a lifetime since he met Jesus on that Damascus road, he blurts out the word: “NO!” In my mind he writes that word in HUGE letters. Shall any of these things separate us from Christ? NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!
Looking back over all he had been through, and looking forward to a pretty bleak future, it would have been so easy to fall into despair. Does God really hold on to us when bad things happen? Is God really there in the suffering and struggle?
Watch the depth of his response: “In all these things we are more than conquerors because of him who loved us.” He refuses to believe for more than one sentence that God’s love is not relentless, not able to carry him through whatever life will continue to throw his way. “In” all these things, though, not “despite” these things, or “because of” these things, but IN ALL THESE THINGS…
And like Mr. G’s relentless love of Kenny, not because he was a special needs kid or despite the fact that he was a special needs kid, but because he was simply Kenny, his son whom he loved, Paul knew a love that holds on, a love that is relentless for us.
It is how I see my friend, Ann, loving her husband, Dave in his struggle with ALS. Relentless. Sacrificial. You won’t be messing with Dave as long as Ann is around. What an amazing thing to see and know in and through another’s love.
Have you ever been the recipient of that kind of love in a human being? Breathe a word of thanks to have known that grace and that gift. Like Paul, ‘remember’ all that God has done for you through that relentless kind of love. Discover and recover the sense of the God who is that relentless in our lives. A love that holds on to us. A love that feeds us and accompanies us and walks every step of the journey with us…
And then ask and answer this simple question: “God, whom do you need me to love with that kind of relentless love this week?”