Flatliner

Thursday, November 30, 2006

The Nature of God

I have been fasting for a few days now. I am on day 4 with a couple of breaks - like when someone at work bought me a sub. I've been thinking alot about my future and what God has planned for my life, so I decided to take some time to focus on the nature of God, or at least one part of it.

What drew me to embrace God was His compassion. As I learned about Him, He seemed to be offering me what I needed most; acceptance and love. And that's what he has continued to do throughout my relationship with Him.

I am fascinated and amazed by Genesis 3. After God comes upon Adam and his wife, Eve, hiding after eating the "apple," this happens:

"The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

"Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"-- therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken."

After they defied Him he clothed them and more importantly for all of us, He saved them from eating of the tree of life and living forever in their state of sin.

I am no theologian, but could God make himself any clearer? He loved Adam and Eve. He loved them enough to save them from everlasting life in sin even if it meant expulsion from the garden. He made them clothes, even.

He did the same for us. He sent Jesus to save us from everlasting life in His absence.

And He clothed us.

Monday, January 01, 2001

About

Flatliner started as a codename; a sort of a nickname. A joke of sorts.

My pseudo-pseudonym based on a movie of questionable greatness and that movie's greatest character. One Mr. Billy Mahoney; the child tormentor in the red hooded sweatshirt.

I had a red hooded sweatshirt.

I took both names, but only the name of the movie stuck.

Flatliners, of course, is based on the premise of med students killing and reviving each other. Each returned from the experience with death with a tormentor or tormentors - something or someone from their past requiring resolution or redemption.

The idea of redemption and rebirth sound good to me.

But the reality sounds even better. Jesus offers us rebirth and redemption both.

Without the fear of those pesky ghosts in red hooded sweatshirts.

Hebrews 12

You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: "If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned." The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, "I am trembling with fear."

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.