All I Want For Christmas

 As a child of Chicken Creek, some things seemed out of reach when I was young. I was an only child and spent plenty of time alone. That’s not a sad statement, it was in solitude that I was able to cultivate an imagination and develop the ability to self soothe and be content in silence. Movies, books, video games, and television programs became a playground of sorts and in the amusement park of my mind I would encounter fascinating people and places that seemed so far from Pulaski. Somewhere in those years I became fascinated by the symphony. I’ve never been musical, but I have always been a lover of music. When I was sixteen three of my great loves converged and created within me a new fascination. As I mentioned, I loved movies, and I loved music, and I loved books, and one of my favorite books was Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” In the fall of that year a movie version was released and I was all in. I saw the movie, multiple times, had the movie poster on my bedroom wall, and even bought the soundtrack. The soundtrack to the movie was all classical music, and this was probably the first time I’d ever listened to classical music. Around that time I started wanting to go to a symphony and hear classical music performed live. I can’t say why for certain, but I think it was because I believed that going to symphonies made you classy and dignified, two words that weren’t thrown around much in my circle of influence. Still, I really wanted to go to a symphony. As an adult, I often found myself traveling long distances, alone, at night. Most nights I would spend some of that time listening to classical music on public radio. The first piece of classical music to truly resonate with me was Mussorgsky’s “Pictures At An Exhibition.” It was also the first classical CD I purchased, intentionally. When I bought the Dracula soundtrack at sixteen I didn’t know it was going to be orchestral music only — just another of life’s happy, fortunate accidents. 

As my fascination with classical music began to grow, I encountered a symphony that spoke to me like no other, Handel’s “Messiah.” It was written nearly three hundred years ago, and it tells a story that is nearly three thousand years old. The symphony tells the story of Israel’s coming Messiah from the pages of the prophet Isaiah. Today, after decades of hoping, wanting, waiting, wishing, dreaming, I attended my first symphony, “Messiah” at the Schermerhorn in downtown Nashville. Sometimes in life, things we wait for fail to deliver and we are left crestfallen and disappointed, but this was not one of those days. It was everything I imagined and more. When my son later asked me what I thought of it, I told him it was painfully beautiful. The musicians, the vocalists, the conductor, the chorus were awe inspiringly talented performers. So many times I had to wipe away the tears streaming down my face, sometimes from the beauty of the performance and the message and sometimes from the pain of the story. Majesty and misery simultaneously. The morning began with a beautiful worship service and the symphony, at least for me, became another one. Today will be one of the days that I remember as one of the best days. A day when reality lived up to the hype. The cherry on top was getting to experience it all with the love of my life. Everything is better when shared — pain, pleasure, beauty, everything, except Oreo Cheesecake, that is best enjoyed alone.

This isn’t one of those humble brag things where I have an ulterior motive of wanting you to be ever so slightly envious of the life I’m living or validate my insecurities with comments like “That’s so amazing!” or “You’re so lucky.” Even if it was a humble brag it wouldn’t be very good one. Most people I know experience zero FOMO about me going to the symphony — we literally couldn’t give away our two extra tickets. I’m sharing this to call our attention to a woefully overlooked and undervalued part of life that I want to share with everyone: perspective. 

Today I have a couple of different perspectives that help me to see this Christmas season for what it is, a magical, undeserved, but greatly appreciated, gift. Perspective number one is all about Christmas past and Christmas present. This morning I thought about the Christmases we spent at the jail, just to see our incarcerated loved ones on a video monitor. We could have done the same thing with our phones, but going to the physical jail, knowing they were on the other side of the walls, brought the smallest degree of comfort that can come from being so close, though mingled with the pain of feeling so far. The only place sadder than a jail at Christmas is a cemetery at Christmas, and we’ve been there too. Though painful, these are the places that provide perspective. Somehow the lights twinkle a little bit brighter, the music is a little more joyous and the fellowship a little more comforting when viewed from that perspective today.

The first perspective is all about a humble and lamentable disposition, but this second one is a bit more literal. In the last twenty-four hours I’ve gotten to spend time with both of my grandchildren. Both of them stacked together are less than five feet tall, so you really have to get down on their level to enjoy them. With Rougaroux that means sitting in the floor, no matter how painful it is on your hips and back and no matter hard it is to get back up again. Christmas is beautiful from his level because everything is a joy, well almost everything. The word “no” in any capacity is not a joy for this little boy on the cusp of two. From his perspective Christmas is a bit weird, but a good weird. Suddenly there is a giant tree, filled with decorations, lights and gifts in the middle of his living room, but he isn’t supposed to touch it. If you’re wondering how enthusiastic he is about the “look but don’t touch” policy, let me share two little details with you. 1) For awhile, when he would walk by a tree and spot a ball shaped ornament around eye level, he would swing his right hand like a baseball bat and launch the ornament across the house. 2) All of the ornaments within reach are now held onto the branches with a rubber band. True story. Besides the tree in the midst of his living room, ornately decorated with irresistible forbidden fruit, there is the random appearance of his beloved Gumbo, adorned in a Santa Claus suit, bearing gifts that can be as enthralling as a truck or as pedestrian as a shirt. Despite the bizarre and confusing rituals, and the occasional “no”, he seems to love the holiday as a whole. 

And then there is Nola. This little lady doesn’t think much about anything yet. Her timeline consists of only about two hours. Eat, changed, sleep, repeat. In the rare moments where she is wide eyed and observing this new universe, she mostly wrinkles her forehead, seemingly perplexed by the things she encounters, though occasionally entertained by things like ceiling fans and Christmas lights. Our time together is much more subdued than my time with Rougaroux, and less dangerous since there are no flying objects. My day in Nashville was such a joy, such a blessing, so much fun, and the fulfillment of decades of desire, but from the perspective of Sunday morning at about 5:30 am, it was the second best thing I did today. The best part of the day was sitting and drinking coffee, watching Nola sleep, with seasonal worship music playing in the background, a fireplace in the foreground, and a beautifully illuminated Christmas tree as the centerpiece. All the pomp and circumstance of the symphony was merely the pretty paper in which this priceless and fleeting gift was wrapped.

Perspective is a priceless gift because it has the ability to make all the gifts in our lives priceless, whether great or small, common or rare. To borrow from Handel, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Halle-lujah!" That’s best I can say it, but it pales in comparison to the poetic way Beth Moore expresses it, so I’ll give her the last word. “Tears fill my eyes often these days and as often over awe and gladness as sadness. The gifts to be had here — stubborn beauties among thorns — grow sacred with age.”

From Scrooge To Santa

When I was about eight or nine years old I heard the nativity story for the first time. I grew up in a religious tradition that drew strict boundaries between the sacred and secular during December, so I was largely unfamiliar with the story, the songs or the imagery. This particular year my family broke with tradition and visited a local outdoor nativity play, complete with live animals. To say that it made quite an impression on me would be an understatement. After the play we returned to my Big Mama’s house and I can remember looking out the window at the night sky, hoping to see the star I’d just heard so much about. As you can imagine I was disappointed, but I wasn’t discouraged, in fact, I was fascinated. One of my greatest joys then, and greatest memories now, was listening to the Christmas records that Big Mama would play in the living room or her house. The living room was largely off limits to us kids, being the closest thing to a formal room that she had in her tiny house. The living room, unlike the den, was unspoiled by messy, grubby handed little children. The carpet was in good shape, the furniture looked new and there was a nearly coffin sized cabinet that housed a radio, eight track, and record player. The one time a year I was allowed in this room was during Christmas, when Big Mama would play her Christmas records. Those angelic sounding carols coming from her console stereo only fueled my fascination with this side of the Christmas tradition. This fascination would eventually fade into the background, being replaced by things more interesting to teenage boys, like baseball, video games and girls, but it would come roaring back unexpectedly in my forties. 

Oddly enough, the revival of my fascination with the nativity story began in sunny Florida, nearly ten years ago. There were many things I loved about life in Florida, but the winter holidays was not one of them. Growing up in Tennessee, Thanksgiving and Christmas had a certain look and feel meteorologically. The changing color of the leaves was met by cold nights and soon after, bare landscapes. Christmas just never felt like Christmas to this Tennessee boy in Floridian exile. At this point in my life, I had been living away from home and extended family for five or six years and I felt it most during the holidays. For most of my life, my holiday traditions were pretty deeply ingrained. Being a part of a very large family, holidays were crowded and loud and so much fun. During your formative years you don’t realize how important these traditions will become to you until the time when they are no longer available. Time moves on, children grow up, marry and move away, beginning their own families, older folks die and we all begin to drift into different directions. Every year, around Thanksgiving, I found myself longing for some connection to the holidays as I’d always known them back home. I needed to feel connected to a place in spirit that I was separated from in body, and suddenly, those songs and images from my childhood began to reawaken and call out to me.

Some backstory might be helpful here. For many years I was a Scrooge, a Grinch, when it came to Christmas. The only side of the season I saw was the receipts for purchase. My obsession was on how much it all cost and how much trouble it all was. I hated putting up the tree, the decorations and the lights. I hated the shopping. I hated the expense and the hassle. But that all began to change the first Christmas we spent in Florida, due in large part to a visit from our mothers. My Honey has always loved Christmas and she got it honest because her mother really loved Christmas. For Honey their visit was certainly a breath of fresh air and for me it was reinforcements. While I was at work during the day, Honey and our mothers transformed our sunny Florida home into a winter wonderland and it was magnificent. Perhaps it was the mixture of the beautiful decorations, having home come to us, and spending a few days enjoying a Seaside Christmas with our mothers, but my small heart grew three sizes that day. If my heart swelled during their visit, it would burst a few days later.

After the moms went back to Tennessee, leaving us with tableaus of Christmas past, I was standing at the kitchen sink, looking out the window, washing dishes and cooking dinner, while listening to Christmas music. I was very much in the Christmas spirit now and had pulled up a generic YouTube Christmas playlist to run in the background. In a sentimental sneak attack, the song “O Holy Night” as performed by David Phelps and the Gaither Family Singers, came on and took me out. I’m sure I’d heard the song before, I mean, who hasn’t, but I don’t know that I’d ever really listened to it lyrically. Standing in our kitchen, Christmas magic was being worked as memory, longing, and faith mingled together and the dam in my heart burst. Tears streamed down my face as I thought of Christmas past, was grateful for Christmas present and longed for another “Tender Tennessee Christmas” in the near future. I can tell you that my new found love of all things Christmas was born in that moment. 

In the days that followed, I found great comfort sitting in the early morning or late night hours, when it was still dark, drinking a cup of coffee, with only the light from the tree illuminating the room. I would sit, sip, and sing. Those traditional Christmas carols that Big Mama used to play — Silent Night, O Holy Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Away in a Manger, Do You Hear What I Hear, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Joy to the World — became a source of comfort and joy, to borrow a phrase. Those moments of solitude, faith, family and feelings mingled together in a magical way that was equal parts nostalgia and theology. 

Nearly a decade later, this is still my favorite time of year and I am all in for all things Christmas. I even enjoy going with Honey to Hobby Lobby and looking at all the Christmas decorations that invade every aisle, starting sometime around late September. For me, there is nothing better than sitting quietly, looking at the lights on a tree and listening to those beautiful old songs. They had the power to transport me back in time to a living room in Tennessee, a stable in Bethlehem, and to transform me from Scrooge to Santa.

“Long lay the world in sin and error pining

'Til He appears and the soul felt its worth

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn

Fall on your knees; O hear the Angel voices!

O night divine, O night when Christ was born

O night, O Holy night, O night divine!

Truly He taught us to love one another;

His law is love and His Gospel is Peace

Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother

And in His name, all oppression shall cease

O little town of Bethlehem

How still we see thee lie

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by

Yet in thy dark streets shineth

The everlasting light

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight

Happy, Happy Birthday Baby

 The first birthday we celebrated together was her 18th, December 7, 1993. We had only known one another for four months, but I’m pretty sure that was the night she fell in love with me — I had already fallen in love with her the day we met. We didn’t do anything amazing and had Instagram existed back then it probably wouldn’t have even warranted a photo, but it did create a memory that is still vivid three decades later. That night I took my record collection over to her house and I sang her Elvis, Conway Twitty and George Jones songs until the early morning hours. 

Subsequent years would be spent in more exciting ways, but I don’t know if they can top — at least in my mind — the first one….that is, until this one. The most mesmerizing way to view someone you love is to merely observe them doing what they love, and for Honey, what she loves is serving the people she loves. The circumstances surrounding the birth of our granddaughter have necessitated we stay with our children during the first few days since the baby was born. 

I told her last night that God always has a way of working with what we bring to Him. I can’t remember the last time she was able to sleep through the night and that played to her advantage this week. She’s gladly joined in to help with the overnight feedings and diaper changes that our sweet Magnola has needed. Additionally, she has cooked food, washed dishes, done laundry, played nurse and gone to doctor appointments, all with an ear to ear smile on her face. It’s not a burden or a chore, she genuinely loves it and thrives when she’s needed.

For Honey, service is always with a smile. Serving is her love language and she is fluent in love. Seeing Honey helping others is as natural as observing a fish in water or bird in flight. It was what she was created to do and she does it with a skill equivalent to an artist.

Recently a quote I came across has become one of my favorites, and today it reminds me of her. “The monk wakes at 4am to pray. The young mom wakes at 4am to warm a bottle. God meets them both.” She’s not a young mom, but she is a new grandmother, and there is nothing more divine than watching her with her grand babies. Time may erase our youth, but it engraves our lasting beauty. When I met her at seventeen I’d never seen anyone prettier, and watching her all these years later I’ve never seen anything more beautiful. Our first birthday together we were just children and this birthday we get to enjoy with our grandchildren. Every time I watch her with her grand babies I fall even more in love with her.

I’m reminded of a George Jones song thinking about her this morning. “Loving you could never be better than it is right now.”

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go sing her a song.

She's as sweet as Tupelo honey

She's an angel of the first degree

She's as sweet, she's as sweet as Tupelo honey

Just like honey, baby, from the bee,

The Border of Life and Death

 

Neither of my grandchildren were born in a conventional fashion. “Difficult” labor and delivery has kind of been a family tradition for my branch of the Britton family tree. When my mother delivered me it was only after more than a day of labor, followed by an emergency caesarean. My first son was born following a twenty-six hour labor and ended with an emergency caesarean. Our first grandson was delivered naturally, but he was also induced due to critically high blood pressure in his mother, resulting in a six week premature birth. He had to spend two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, and due to COVID protocols, we were unable to see him in person until he was discharged from the hospital. Most recently, our granddaughter was born, but not without extreme duress on the part of her mother. Three days after induced labor produced no baby, she was sent home, only to return two days later, beginning 24 hours of hard labor that ended in, you guessed it, a caesarean. As if to add insult to injury, her mamma endured all of this while having the flu and then had to make two more trips to the hospital for two more surgical procedures postpartum. Today I listened as the labor and delivery doctor described this as the most difficult one she had personally witnessed. I have witnessed enough births to be able to say without hesitation, in labor and delivery, our mothers straddle the border of death in order to drag us into the land of the living. There is a reason that delivering a child is referred to as labor, or if you prefer the old King James Version term, travail. Bottom line, creating, sustaining, and delivering a human life is so incredibly hard only God and women can do it. William Makepeace Thackeray said, “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”

We didn’t have to wait two weeks to meet our granddaughter like we did with our grandson, but we did have to wait two days. Since mamma and baby were in flu protocol, no one was allowed into the room with them for a few days. Generously, the OB nurse offered to escort us outside the hospital so that we could see her through the window. As the five of us were walking back into the hospital, I stopped and looked back to snap this picture. There are two images in this picture, each of which represents polar extremes on the spectrum of life and death. 

On the right is the hospital window for the room that was housing this brand new life, just twenty-four hours old, that we were all there to celebrate, but on the left was the helicopter pad where my father, in the midst of a heart attack, was loaded up and flown to Murfreesboro just two months earlier. Fred R. Barnard taught us all that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll only share a few more with you here. 

I paused to take this picture because I wanted a reminder of the frailty, brevity, tragedy, and beauty of life. At once it can be both magical and horrible, or as Michael Franti says it, “Life is amazing, then it sucks, then it’s amazing again.” In October, I left my office, rushed to this very hospital and stood in the cramped ER exam room five, along with my mother, sons, father, and half a dozen doctors and nurses. They were working diligently to ensure that dad would survive the med-flight so that he could have the life-saving surgery an hour later. I’ve been in similar rooms with other people and their family more times than I can remember, so I’ve learned to maintain my composure and think clearly in these moments. I always considered it an occupational necessity to remain calm so I could minister to the people in the midst of their crisis, but on this day it was my family in crisis. As they prepared to wheel dad out of the room and to the helicopter pad, I remember looking at him and thinking, “This could be the last time I ever see my father.” Sitting here now I realize it sounds morbid to write this, but if you put yourself in that room it is a perfectly reasonable thing to think. On a day where we feared, if not expected, death would come to our family, we were graciously given the gift of life. Now, two months later, a mere thirty feet from the helicopter pad that played a part in saving my father’s life, we were standing outside the window, already in love with the new life we had been expecting, that we feared was going to be stripped from us. Sitting here tonight, I am grateful in both cases our fears were alleviated and our joy was made fully. 

The night before my granddaughter was born I spent a good bit of time in the chapel, praying a mixture of Scriptures from Isaiah, John, and Psalms. 

“Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?” says the Lord. “Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?” says your God…Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. 

“You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. In that day you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”

“Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”

If this picture says anything it says the border between life and death is narrow and near, and we all walk it like a tightrope. 

Fortunate Fall

   In July 2022, U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas was chairing a conference in Bilbao, Spain. The car he was in was traveling down a dark stretch of highway and crashed due to a wild boar that had wandered into the road. The Congressman was taken to a hospital where it was discovered that he had cancer. Fortunately for Representative Castro it was a very treatable form of cancer, but even more fortunate for him was the car wreck that led to its discovery. As strange as it may sound, his misfortune was actually quite fortunate.

  For several years my wife and I have loved listening to the music of Audrey Assad. In fact, it is rare for our Sunday morning not to begin with her song “I Shall Not Want”. It’s become a sort of Sunday morning prayer in our home. Admittedly, that is my favorite of her songs, but recently another one has been demanding space in my heart and attention in my thoughts. The song is “Fortunate Fall” and the lyrics are simply four lines repeated four times.

Oh happy fault, oh happy fault

That gained for us, so great a Redeemer

Fortunate fall, fortunate fall

That gained for us, so great a Redeemer

  Something doesn’t have to be lengthy to be profound — something I would do well to learn — and this brief stanza gripped my thoughts and has refused to let go. We often speak of Genesis 3 and refer to it as the fall of man or the original sin. Most are familiar with this story. God said do not eat of the tree, Adam and Eve ate of the tree, the door of disregarding God’s will and wisdom was opened and very soon all manner of evil came in. The consequences of our ancient ancestor Adam’s actions are still plaguing us today….shame, fear, pain, division, death. Just as the Judeans loved to taunt their northern neighbors, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Perhaps we wonder, can anything good come out of the fall of man? I have come to understand, yes, yes it can. 

  Whenever something piques my interest, I have a tendency to delve into it obsessively and try to learn everything I can about it while the zeal of curiosity fuels me. What I uncovered after I discovered this song was that it was actually quite ancient, like 1,700 years old ancient. These lyrics first appear in the 4th century Catholic Paschal Vigil Mass Exsultet: O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem, "O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer." Talk about a deep cut cover song, well done Ms. Assad.

  The technical term is “Felix Culpa”, Latin for happy/lucky/blessed or as Audrey Assad put it, fortunate fall. It is one of the many paradoxes in the Bible — the first shall be last, the least will be the greatest, those who lose their life will save it, etc. Felix Culpa is about the fortunate consequences of an unfortunate event. It is a reminder that there is nothing broken which cannot be redeemed by God. Augustine of Hippo remains one of the most brilliant minds in Christian theology and in the fourth century he wrote, “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.”

  Please don’t mistake God’s will for God’s working. God never intends or desires for anyone to do that which is contrary to Him, and yet, part of what makes God, well, God, is His ability and willingness to take our mess and create a masterpiece. Have you ever watched one of those cooking shows where chefs are given very few, and often random, ingredients, only to witness them create amazing dishes? That’s God. Yes, our ancestor Adam and his near descendants made a mess of God’s good creation, and that is when God stepped in and began creating a masterpiece. It is because of this fall that we were able to witness the full depth, the magnitude and the majesty of God’s love through the life and death of Jesus.

 Padre Pio, an Italian Capuchin friar who died in 1968, once said, “Blessed is the crisis that made you grow, the fall that made you gaze up to Heaven, the problem that made you look up to God.” This is precisely why the gospel is good news. God turns our mess into a masterpiece in Him. Have you ever messed up? Did you make an even bigger mess when you tried to clean it up on your own? I’ve been there. But I’ve also, as the old gospel song says, brought Christ my broken life, so stained by sin, and He created a new and made whole again, my empty wasted years He did restore. Fortunate fall that gained for us so great a Redeemer.

A reading from Romans 7-8

Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.” But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power. At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came to life, and I died. So I discovered that the law’s commands, which were supposed to bring life, brought spiritual death instead. Sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me; it used the commands to kill me. But still, the law itself is holy, and its commands are holy and right and good.

But how can that be? Did the law, which is good, cause my death? Of course not! Sin used what was good to bring about my condemnation to death. So we can see how terrible sin really is. It uses God’s good commands for its own evil purposes.

So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus…What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.

Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.” No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDLKuJgRqPM