Subliminal Messages


The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7


From the day I learned to read I’ve been reading. I read voraciously.  There are books and magazines all over my house and in my car. You never know when you might get stuck somewhere, or have to wait for some reason. You should always have reading material at the ready. Some of the things I read are for educational purposes or spiritual growth and some are just fluff, fiction.  Today, proving once again that he can speak anywhere, anyway, any time he wants, God used a line from a book that is very much in the chick lit drama to get my attention.

In the book a man is dying and being very cavalier about the whole thing. As he is making jokes about his possible heart transplant his doctor warns him about how much worse it could get. “You’ll see taking a decent breath as a gift from God.”

My first thought was,  “Isn’t breath, any breath, labored or otherwise always a “gift from God?”  Of course it is. “For in him we live and move and have our being.”  (Acts 17:28a)

As I moved on from my first thought I couldn’t help but smile. I am a Christian, fully aware that things that some people see as ordinary, as a given in life, I see as blessings. I see them that way because they are blessings. What about the person who pays no attention to God but comes across that line in that novel she bought to pass time while waiting in the airport? Certainly she could pass right over it or maybe it gives her pause. Hm, breath as a gift from God. Or maybe she just hasn’t thought about God in a very long time and seeing his name in print jogs something in her heart.

Many times I’ve had conversations where someone has tried to make me feel guilty because I read fiction.  Sometimes it’s worse than that. Sometimes there is an implication that people of real intelligence don’t read for fun. I don’t care. I love to read and as long as the content does not offend my Father, I feel free to read whatever I choose. Every now and then I see a statement like the one I quoted that just makes me smile.

Watch television. There is subliminal message, after subliminal message. We need certain clothes, cars, products, to be successful. We need to be a certain size, have a certain job and the right friends. Alternate lifestyles are absolutely fine. BZZZZZ! That is the sound of the buzzer that announces, wrong! But those messages are there in full force.
How nice it is to stumble across the name of God, the hint of the power of God mentioned so casually as if everyone were aware of it. That kind of subliminal message is just fine with me.  I hope to see more of it. The people who will run far and fast from a televangelist or a person with a tract may not be able to resist the pull of the name of God, dropped oh so casually into their novel. There are many ways to reach people for the Lord and I think we should use and appreciate them all

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