Insurance or Assurance?

Today I was looking over all the junk emails that somehow find their way to our computer. It takes a lot of time to sit and click those things away, doesn't it!!! Before deleting a particular one from today's long list, however, I took the time to look at it. It was an email for insurance. I looked at this particular email because I am on the lookout for some better car insurance.

Insurance. Yuck!! It sort of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. After we lost our home and possessions in Katrina, we felt we would be ok because we had insurance. We quickly learned that was not the case. Seemed like the insurance companies looked for any excuse NOT to honor the home owner policies.

After that brief encounter with junk mail this morning led me to start singing an old hymn written by one of my heroes of the faith, Fanny Crosby. The song is Blessed Assurance. As I sang, I wondered about the difference between insurance and assurance. So, I looked into it...

My handy-dandy computer dictionary gave me these definitions:

Assurance is

• pledge or promise: a declaration that inspires or is intended to inspire confidence
  


• confidence: confidence in personal ability or status
  


• certainty: freedom from uncertainty

Insurance is

• financial protection against loss or harm: an arrangement by which a company gives customers


• financial protection against loss or harm such as theft or illness in return for payment premium

While I know I need insurance to live and function legally in the USA, as I think of the two definitions and what they offer, my heart is much more drawn to the word assurance.

Insurance - the kind I need for health, home, and car - no longer gives me any confidence. Seems whenever we submit a claim, it is denied or it is paid but the premium goes up!

So for me, these two words can't be used interchangeable, as one dictionary suggested. My insurance does NOT give me assurance.

Assurance? That comes from knowing Christ! He's the only One I know that has an unbroken track record of faithfulness when it comes to promises!!

It really is bless-ed, isn't it? It's WONDERFUL to be lost in His love!!!

Hymn lyrics

Blessèd assurance, Jesus is mine!

O what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

Perfect submission, perfect delight,

Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;

Angels descending bring from above

Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

Perfect submission, all is at rest

I in my Savior am happy and blest,

Watching and waiting, looking above,

Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.