You may not like the way it looks, but you have to admit the body in which you live is the most amazing creation - and not just the externals... Every second, there are hundreds if not thousands of processes going on inside your skin, in absolute harmony with each other and your current environment.
The one that's caught my attention today is my breath. I inhale, my lungs separate the oxygen from everything else and I exhale. The oxygen, which if delivered straight to my veins would kill me, somehow gets mashed up into little pieces and is driven around my body at an incredible speed, bringing life to every cell, and colour to my cheeks... My soul is revived.
But if I don't breathe, I die. It's not surprising then, that one of the Biblical pictures for God is "spirit", or "breath". Closer than the air I breathe. In the beginning, He spoke - and it became. He breathed - and Man came alive.
[ And no, I'm not going to get into an argument about whether Genesis is literal or figurative. Suffice to say I don't have the faith to not believe in a creator. And it's a good thing the Bible-writers used pictures to describe God, otherwise I'd have some difficulty in comprehending Him - and if he were easy to define, wouldn't he be rather too small to even be God? ]
The writer also records the Creator chose to make me just like Him, and like him, I can choose what to do with my breath. I can cheer myself up when I whistle or I can blow out birthday candles. I can speak, or not. And just like God, the words I speak have power; I can bring life or death to those around me...
Life or death, you ask? Have you ever been 'cut' by the words of another? I can still 'feel' the words when someone once told me they were ashamed of me... And the childhood chant of "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me," is just nonsense.
I breathe in, and the air I breathe gives me life. I breathe out, and it's up to me whether I build up or tear down. I can assist you into the depths of despair or I can give you hope and a vision. My words can encourage or discourage. I can destroy or I can create!
We know that when a man stops breathing, he stops speaking, he can't hear you and he dies. But were you to get there soon enough, and breathe into his dead body, even your reject gases would be sufficient to bring him back to life again!
How much more then could the breath of God flow through you and make you alive, even when you feel like the living dead....
My soul needs to be revived, I need to hear His voice. I need to feel his Spirit, so I think about Him and I choose to take another deep breath! And if you were to ask Him, I just know he'd breathe into you....J
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