What is our advantage as Christians? Do we have a special protection from the pains and penalties of life? Is ours a special standing before God as though He gives us favored treatment? Are we somehow exempt from war, pestilence, famine and disease? The answer is "no" because life does not seem to have favorites.  It tends to rain misfortune and blessings upon the just as well as the unjust.  We do have an advantage as Christians, however, and our advantage is that in the midst of tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword we are more than conquerors.  God meets us in the rut of our own agonies to show us who we are.  He inspires our perseverance.  He tutors us through our trauma.  He gives us a reason to believe in ourselves and those who meet us in the valley of our tears.  He magnifies the meaning of grace even though healing might never happen.

Our advantage is not some mysterious rescue.  It is a powerful Presence from which there is no separation.  Paul reminds us that none of the toublesome things of life can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.  In fact we are not exempt from them.  We are blessed through them.  Sometimes it takes these things to help us discover the love we have.  Even though most times we make the very hell we live in, He wants to meet us in the lowest moments of our lives.  Whatever disease and despair may wish to conquer us, He reminds us that we are not far from Him.

Of course there are times when God appears to be silent and absent.  Our prayers for a "quick fix" or a dramatic intervention seem to fall on deaf ears.  Our childish concept of a God who will rescue us in every difficulty disappoints us.  We want to shake our fist at God and cry, "unfair, unfair!" But then in the midst of our most painful moment we discover a peace that is unexplainable.  We find an unconquerable reason for faith and hope.  We experience a grave-defying assurance that even the "valley of the shadow of death" is crossable.  It is as though our most troubling moments usher us into a meeting place with God.  No, He does not put us there.  He finds us there and we are conditioned to receive Him there.  Our advantage is simply this... nothing, and that means nothing, can separate us from the love of God.  Faith connects us to that kind of hope.