Separation causes a lot of things.  For babies, the peak time for separation anxiety is between 10 to 18 months.  Even as adults, separation can be very difficult.  Due to immigration issues or other circumstances beyond our control, separation happens.  Families end up being torn apart.  In marriages, separation occurs for the sake of hoping that broken pieces are glued back together again.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve had close friends that I was separated from for years due to my moving or their moving, and somehow losing contact information.

Photos by Sarah Pflug

Unfortunately, when I was a teenager, through no fault of her own, my grandmother was separated from her brothers for years.  We didn’t have any of the contact information, and after so many years, she assumed that they all had died except for her.  As God would have it, when I was at my last place of residence a few years ago, I decided to do an ancestry search to see if I could find any information on my grandmother’s side of the family.  Lo and behold, I stumbled upon an obituary showing that there had been one brother left along with my grandmother.  He had died nine months after her. It made me sad to know that my grandmother hadn’t spoken to him in so long, how she must have felt, along with all the “what ifs” floating through my head.

Separation brings on two friends: sadness and loneliness.  These friends can only be mended by God himself, who is near to the brokenhearted.  Because we live in a fallen world, we are prone to separated from anyone and anything.  However, there is one thing that will always stand the test of time.  That is, the love of God.

Romans 8:35-39 New King James Version (NKJV)

³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶ As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

³⁷ Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, ³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Be blessed,

Katina