Take a Breath
We are getting better and better at keeping our breath to ourselves. We are more accustomed to standing a bit apart when talking to each other. Wearing a mask while going about some of our activities is not new behavior anymore. I used to do it for others but now use a curiously strong breath mint to protect myself from my own breath inside the mask. There are things harmful to people that spread about the human population. The minute pests can ride tiny, aerosol-small particles of moisture.
Good things ride about in breath too. When you breathe in, the molecules of oxygen that exist in the air get into your lungs and be absorbed by tissue there, then rush through your bloodstream to keep the cells of your body alive. How cool is that? I don’t know what CPR instruction looks like these days, but way back when I took the training there were chest compressions and breaths given. There is enough oxygen in exhaled breath to do some good for the person needing resuscitation. When you emerged from the waters of the womb, the person helping might have held you up by the ankles and given you a swat on the butt, so your physical instinct to take a breath would transition you from umbilical-living to lung-living. Breath gives and sustains life. It is this life-giving side of breathing that makes it a great image for God’s life-gift.
In two original languages of the documents of scripture, Hebrew and Greek, the word for “breath” and the words for “spirit” and “wind” are the same. Ruah and pneuma in those two biblical languages mean spirit or wind or breath. When Jesus is answering the Pharisee, Nicodemus (John 3:8), about how one is born from above, he says, “The wind (pneuma) blows where it likes, you can hear the sound of it but you have no idea where it comes from and where it goes. Nor can you tell how anyone is born by the wind of the Spirit (pneumatos).”
When Ezekiel received God’s word in the vision of the dry bones, God told him to prophesy to the bones filling up the valley: “O dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord. Thus said the Master, the Lord, to the dry bones: ‘I am about to bring breath into you and you shall live. And I will lay sinews over you and bring up the flesh over and stretch the skin over you.’” So as the prophet thus prophesied, there was a clatter and the bones came together, one bone to another. And the sinews and flesh came up and the skin too, but there was no breath in these bodies, The Lord told the man to prophesy to the wind and say, “Thus said the Master, the Lord ‘From the four winds, come, wind, and blow into these slain that they may live.’” (Are you taking this in?) After he prophesied, here is what happened: “The breath came into them and they lived, and they stood up on their feet, a very, very great legion.” Read it all in Ezekiel 37. When all seemed hopeless and lost for Yahweh’s people, when they were nothing but a valley of bones, the prophet, while exiled in Babylon, gives the word of hope. He lets them know the Ruah, the spirit/wind/breath of God would resurrect them.
Consider the beautiful hymn, “Breathe on Me Breath of God” (Hymn 508):
Breathe on me Breath of God,
fill me with life anew,
that I may love what thou doest love,
and do what thou wouldst do.
Breathe on me, Breath of God,
till I am wholly thine,
till all this earthly part of me
glows with thy fire divine.
How about you? How are you doing? What exile are you caught in? Have you ever had circumstances take hold of you, squeezing all the life out of you? Someone near you listens, then says to you, “Breathe, just breathe. Take a deep breath.” They see from your face you need life, and they recommend the wind, the spirit of God, for a solution. This Sunday we will hear from Genesis of the breath of God that hovers over the waters in the welter and waste, in the darkness. As this wind moves, God began to create heaven and earth, saying “Let there be light.” and there was light. Just so, God creates new life in you. This Sunday we will see Jesus, dripping wet from the waters of the Jordan, then the Spirit from above and the voice of Heaven declare the ministry of the Beloved Son begins. This Sunday we will see Paul baptizing in the name of Jesus those who have never heard of the Holy Spirit, and see that wind of God begin something new in them.
Right now, as I write this, I am visualizing a beginning launched in you. God lifts you to say “Let there be…” something in you: some kind of new life. May you take that breath, inhale the wind God is sending.
A Breath of Something New
Yes, let there be light.
We see the light as we come to life.
Lifted, we feel divine fingers
wrapped round our human ankles
a holy smack startles us
we gasp
and in blows
the rushing ruah of God
filling the millions of alveoli
starving for the Spirit.
Hear that voice now
“Breathe child. You are my child!”
David Price—January 2021