Sabra, everyone here who loves God loves Him with all their hearts and souls and also wants to share the Good News...I have loved God since I was a child, and that faith has been tempered and tested by more agony than I can write here (but most of it's in my book).

I used to live my life "by the Book", almost killing myself (literally) trying to do the right thing and follow the rules right to the letter of the Scriptural law. It wasn't until I was (again literally) born again in the ICU after a suicide attempt that my eyes were open to the Truth that would set me free...that I am loved unconditionally.

I still believe in the Bible, and I love every word and every morsel of love and mercy that I now read within every word. But I can no longer go back to believing that life (or God) is as "black and white" "right or wrong" as I did before that epiphany in the ICU. It would be impossible for me to go back to believing that there's no such thing as grey area where God is concerned. Because I have lived most of my life in the grey area, and I know with absolute certainty that I am not nor will I ever be beyond redemption. Not only that, but I know with all my heart that just as much as you love God and love to share His wonderful news, God is infinitely more in love with us. And in that powerful but vulnerable (yes, vulnerable) hunger to be in a tender, loving, personal relationship with us, He uses every possible means to reach us. That means that He wears different faces and allows Himself to be called different names, because He is so in love with ALL of His children, that He will do whatever it takes to reach each and every one exactly where they are.

I don't understand all the ramifications of that, I don't pretend to, but I know with every fiber of my being and soul that this Almighty Creator God stoops as low as He has to to sit in the same dirt and muck and filth that any one of His children sits in, and Loves them right there, just the way they are.

That depth of Love is the Good News. That compassionate God with dirt underneath His fingernails is the Good News. That Healing Love that shows Itself in a multitude of creative impossible-to-resist loving ways is the Good News.

There's no shooting of messengers here. Just other perspectives, other voices crying out in the wilderness that there's more to this God than we could ever imagine and we cannot ever box Him into what we think He ought to be. We each bring our experiences and insights to the table and together we build additional epiphany and "food for thought" for each other.

[ July 07, 2005, 12:52 AM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]