Nothing in all Creation
By Joanne Leatch
Sunday, January 4, 2026
Reading: Romans 8:31-39
Did you make a list? For 2026? On paper with a nice sharp HB pencil, your favourite pen, on your phone, laptop? Because this year will be different? Did you make even a secret list. I make a secret list even when I’m busy pretending to myself that I’m not making a list. But it’s always the same list, isn’t it? The same list for 30 years. Walk more, eat more vegetables, drink enough water – whatever. I’ve also had many people tell me that 2025 was one of the worst years that they can personally remember and they are glad to see it go. Illnesses, surgeries, financial setbacks, fractured relationships.
The truth is I get a bit nervous when people wish me Happy New Year. It seems like such a big responsibility, like somehow, I’m supposed to make sure that I keep the year fresh, shiny and filled with positivity and possibility. I was delighted on Friday to read that I’m not alone in these worries. Christian writer Anne Lamott wrote this on January 2, 2026:
I flinch a bit when someone exhorts me to have a happy new year. It might be the word happy, which seems so giddy. And new can be disappointing, confusing. We thought that we had it all figured out and then it turns out that we don’t. But new is life, being alive, curious and waking up. I have deep faith in the goodness of God and I really believe that, all evidence to the contrary, Grace bats last. So, I really do say, ‘bring it on’, but with my heart in my throat.
I think that I feel like Anne Lamott.
The Iona community also talks about newness. The Iona community is an international Christian community with members world-wide, but they also have a centre on the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland. Here is what they write about God and Newness: “We fall into the trap of thinking that God will always do things the same way, the way they have been done before. Yet, the New Testament reminds us that God is in the business of newness: new heaven, new earth, new Jerusalem, new me, new you. Scripture makes it clear that God is always willing to risk, to dare, to think and do outside the box – to do something, everything new! And God wants us to be open to that new thing offered to us, to that new person who will enhance our life, to that new challenge which will make us grow, to that new opportunity we will have to serve. So, let’s tear up all our old, dated lists and be open to that one new thing (probably more, but let’s start with one) that God will do for us, to us, through us.”
So here we are on the cusp of the year, wanting to be open, but a little scared. When I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about today, even before I started thinking about my ridiculous, every year it’s the same list, my mind kept returning to Romans Chapter 8 because guess what – really, we know that 2026 will have great joys great sorrows. None of us knows what it will bring for us. And I kept returning to, “Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God.”
Romans is such an interesting book. It’s the longest of Paul’s writings to the various churches. There was an established Christian church in Rome, but Rome was not actually a church that had been established by Paul. At the time of writing, he had not yet been to Rome and was probably in Corinth. He was also not seeking to resolve a specific issue or problem in the church, as he was in many of his other letters. For example, in his letter to the Colossians, he dealt with Colossian philosophy that promoted excessive legalism and rules and also worship of angels and mysticism. Some of the issues he covered in writing to the Corinthians concerned confusion about the second coming of Christ and practical Christian living, such as their apparent tendency to idleness. Not so in the letter to the Christian church at Rome. He really sets out the whole gospel and God’s plan in this letter. One of his aims was to seek monetary and moral support for a mission trip that he was planning, probably to Spain.
He sends one of his trusted assistants, Phoebe, to deliver the message. As an important aside, Paul had many women acting as his trusted assistants or deputies and also as his benefactors. Many of them such as Phoebe, Lydia and Priscilla were successful, urban businesswomen. They had their own money, they had employees, some worked in such areas as leather, in the business of purple cloth, which was highly prized and expensive, and they were willing to finance Paul. So, Phoebe was not just a carrier of the letter. She didn’t just deliver it. She would have read it in full to different congregational groups that made up the church in Rome, she would have explained it and answered questions in the place of Paul. She was standing in the place of Paul and representing him.
And what a letter. Sixteen chapters, and Romans Eight is one of its most important chapters. Theologian N.T. Wright says, “Romans is the richest, deepest and most powerfully sustained climax anywhere in the literature of the early Christian movement, and perhaps anywhere else as well. God is doing what he always said he would do. He is fulfilling the covenant made with Abraham whereby he always intended to make everything wrong in the world right. Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” Another theologian writes that it is difficult to imagine a work of more theological depth than Romans and particularly Romans Eight. Some interpreters say that this is not only the richest part of Paul’s writings; it is all that we need to comprehend of the teachings of Paul.
Let’s look at them again in two separate translations, one more traditional, one much more modern.
Revised Standard Version
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. 31 What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? … 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Message
26 Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans…31 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? 32 If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son…
35 Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us?…37 There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. 38,39 I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
This is what is going to get us through 2026 and all other years. Let’s look a little more closely at a couple of things. First of all, there are many things that could potentially separate us from the love of God. They don’t all seem bad. Paul seems to group them in pairs with a couple of single items. Death and life. Death is pretty obvious. No matter what we believe, it really is a great unknown. Life is a little more complicated. As some people fear death, some people also fear life. Life does have problems and challenges, but the pleasures of life can also work to try to separate us from the love of God. Money, pleasure, success, good health, they can all lull us into thinking anything good that happens to us is of our own doing. Didn't we work hard? Maybe we don’t need anyone’s help. We did it ourselves. Angels and demons. Again, demons, called principalities in some translations, is pretty obvious but what about angels? Both angels and demons could refer to rulers on earth. Scholars think that angels are probably mentioned because some churches, such as the one in Colossae, were involved in the worship pf angels. Nor things present nor things to come. So, the present, with both its sufferings and its pleasures and temptations and nothing that can come upon us in the future, the unknown. He then names powers. Scholars can’t quite figure out if this is separate, or just an elaboration on principalities and things present and to come, the unknown. Powers are strong but they also cannot separate us from God’s love in Jesus. Then we have neither height nor depth, which can signify the immensity of the physical universe.
And finally, the culmination – nothing – nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God. And to try to think of everything that there might be in creation is absolutely stupefying. We just can’t do it. I love fantasy: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter – I would like to teach at Hogwarts – and science fiction: Star Trek and Star Wars. That’s why I used a picture of part of a galaxy on the front of the order of service. This is just part of creation. I love thinking about how vast it is but it’s also just so beyond what we can understand. But God created it all and understands it all.
The second thing to note is that we are not doing the hanging on to God. God is hanging on to us. That’s a good thing, considering how fickle we are, how we lose concentration, we have a tendency to give up. But God never gives up. One theologian writes that this can simply take our breath away. How can God love us this much? But God does. Is this an easy concept? It is not. In fact, Nancy Mairs, a devout Roman Catholic, who wrote frequently on spirituality and disability issues says that the whole thing – that there is a God who loves us, who came in human form, who was resurrected from the dead and is alive for evermore yet still helps us – can be a lot to swallow. Except that so many people have experienced the presence of God, particularly in bad times, of God just hanging onto them when they couldn’t do it themselves.
Recently a person who has had cancer several times told me that there is an enormous difference since they became a Christian. Whereas they previously felt very alone sometimes, especially in hospital and at times when they had to be isolated, now, they feel strengthened up by the presence of God. I have experienced this myself. Some of you know about my various spinal operations. There is nothing like lying in the hospital in the middle of the night, listening to all the weird hospital noises to let your thinking run wild. And yet, I had the sense of a presence with me, a sense that there was no need to panic.
More well-known people have felt it too. Elizabeth Gilbert is a popular writer. She wrote: Eat, Pray, Love. Gilbert writes that she was a complete nonbeliever, who, when her marriage was crumbling, found herself on the bathroom floor sobbing, “Hello God? This is Liz. I’m sorry to bother you and I’m sorry that I have never tried to talk to you before, but I really need help.” She doesn’t know what she was expecting but she writes that she was greeted with a stillness so profound that she was afraid to take a breath. Stillness that was filled with wisdom, calm and compassion that she had never felt in her life. Liz Gilbert became a believer in that moment. Julian of Norwich, a spiritual woman from the middle ages who wrote the first book published by a woman in the English language, received the divine and well known message that you have probably heard, during a serious illness, “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” And you have heard me mention Kate Bowler, a theologian from our own Manitoba, who has worked most of her professional life at Duke university in the United States. You’ve heard me mention her before because I just can’t get enough of her writing. When everyone: her doctors, her family, and Kate herself, thought that she was dying of colon cancer, she writes, “When I should have been reduced to ashes, I was not. All I felt was love.” And we could talk all day about other examples. You have your own. Now, will we always feel this closeness every time we’re dealing with something difficult? Maybe not. But does that mean that God isn’t there? Also, not. There are so many things that are mysteries. There are all kinds of stories in the Bible where God hides His face from humans for one reason or another, known only to God.
And do note that nothing says that, as Christians, we will not run into trouble. God did not promise any of us a smooth, trouble-free life. God did promise that no matter what happens, nothing will be able to separate us from God’s love. As we enter this new year, let us return to Romans Chapter 8 again and again and let us pray this responsive prayer together:
Last year is gone Lord. Our words, our thoughts, our deeds are in the past.
Today you offer us life and hope. We can begin anew.
You whisper in our ears so that we may praise you.
You fill our souls so that we may serve you.
You lead us into the kingdom so that we may live with you.
Let this be the year that we live really believing that you will not let go of us, that truly, nothing in all creation can separate us from your love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.