Who Shall or What Shall?

35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

I read this yesterday and for the first time in my life, a little tiny pronoun caught my attention. It is the pronoun who. Since it seemed strange to refer to things with the pronoun reserved for people, I examined it closely. Not that I went into a Greek study or even looked at notes in the margin. Not at all. Suddenly it occurred to me that "who" refers to living things, and don't those awful things like trouble, danger, hardship, seem to have a life of their own when they strike? I mean, they seem to grow, bite, entangle, withhold, blind, confuse, give off odors. Same thing real live bad guys can do.

They are real even if they're not alive. That's the point. But they can never separate us from the love of God.