Take a Deep Breath

One of my favorite readings in Scripture is copied below. It simply asks the question, "What can separate us from God?" The answer of course is NOTHING. The way Paul writes this one, and the way it is proclaimed when read aloud, shows that the list things which CANNOT separate us from God is so long, you need to take a breath or two just to list them. Read this aloud and you'll see what I'm talking

about... (BTW, we all know that you have healthy enough lungs to take a deep enough breath to read it, but try to get the point, and read it aloud as you normally would if you were reading to someone)

"If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him? Who will bring a charge against God's chosen ones? It is God who acquits us. Who will condemn? It is Christ (Jesus) who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: "For your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered." [HERE'S THE LIST... DEEP BREATH NOW!] No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 8: 32-39

I love to make these kinds of off the wall points, for you see the list could go on and on and on. I think for fun, and for the sheer purpose of stressing the point, Paul added several extra wonderful "things" to the list of that which cannot separate us from the love of God so you would get the idea that NOTHING... I mean nothing can separate us from the love of God!

"Breathe in, breathe out; move on!" - Jimmy Buffett