Cut Off

Our three year old granddaughter has recently been staying with us while her mom has been hospitalized. So she has been spending quite a bit of time in a hospital room, visiting. I’m sure you can imagine what there is to play with there. Medicine cups, push buttons on the bed, foamy soap dispensers. And it’s always lots of fun to pull the emergency nurse call cord when things get a bit boring. She gets lots of attention very quickly when she does that. So very exciting! But you’d never guess what her favorite new toy was. A tourniquet! She used it as a whip to slap people and things into submission. Then, being the fashion conscious girl that she is, she tried to use it to accessorize her outfit. Around her waist for a belt, draped over her wrist as a bracelet. But we had to stop her when she wanted it to be a choker necklace. She’s too young to understand what happens when your circulation is cut off. But adults understand about being cut off in many ways. We get our credit cut off when we can’t make payments on time. Cut off from our neighbors when our views, religion, or skin color is different. These days, many are cut off and laid off from their jobs. The Bible has some things to say about being cut off. Psalms says that evil men will be cut off. That if we reject Jesus, Our Father will reject us, or cut us off (John 3:36). But here’s the wonderful part. God promises never to cut his people off. And He says it so many different times in many different parts of the Bible. He knew some of us would need reassurance, and this is His comfort to us. Hebrews 13:5 says “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” And this is repeated in the books of Joshua and Isaiah. Psalm 94:14 says it short and to the point:”The Lord will not reject His people.” This world can be cold, incomprehensible, and abrupt. But we can truly believe that if Jesus is our Lord and Savior, God will be with us always and never cut us off.