Just Breathe & Receive

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live’ “[Eze 37:9 NIV].

 Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being [Gen 2:7 NIV].

     One of the biggest challenges in Christianity is understanding the difference between God’s job and our job.  John Cloud and Henry Townsend, in their book, How People Grow, sum up God’s job and our job the following way:

When we try to push God off His throne so that we can take a shot at creating and being the source of life, at controlling the world, judging everyone, and being the chief rule-maker, no wonder we flame out in utter exhaustion! We are not hard-wired for that amount of responsibility and stress. When we disconnect from God as the Source of Life, we are like some allergic-to-dependence, on-the-edge-of-death ICU patient, who yanks out all her tubes, only to discover she has unhooked herself from what supports her very existence.  Hurry sickness can cause some of us to be constantly on the move, no slowing, much less stopping, to catch our spiritual breath.  But God designed our entire being to function with His made-just-for-us, unforced rhythms of resting, then acting; of praying, then doing; and of receiving, then giving.

     Ezekiel 37 gives us a wonderful visual of dry bones receiving God’s CPR.  In verse 3, when Ezekiel in a vision, sees a large mass of desiccated bones littering the valley floor, God asks him, “Son of man, can these bones live?” Ezekiel is smart enough to answer, “Sovereign LORD, You alone know.” Then God tells the prophet to tell the dry bones to pay attention to His Word, for He is going to make breath come into them and bring them to life.  God calls the breath from the four winds and the dry bones are resurrected into a vast army.  Only God, “who gives breath to all living things” could speak life into those old bones.   

[Dan 10:17 NIV] 17 How can I, your servant, talk with you, my lord? My strength is gone and I can hardly breathe.”

[Num 16:22 NIV] 22 But Moses and Aaron fell face down and cried out, “O God, the God who gives breath to all living things, will you be angry with the entire assembly when only one man sins?”

[Job 12:10 NIV] 10 In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.

[Psa 150:6 NIV] 6 Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD.

[Exo 14:14 NIV] 14 The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

[Psa 37:7 NIV] 7 Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways when they carry out their wicked schemes.

[Psa 46:10 NIV] 10 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

[Zec 2:13 NIV] 13 Be still before the LORD, all mankind, because he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.”

LORD JESUS, MAKE MY HEART SIT DOWN!

Patient Trust
A prayer by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955)

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything
To reach the end without delay should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
To something unknown,
Something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
That it is made by passing through
Some stages of instability –
And that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
Your ideas mature gradually –
Let them grow
Let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
As though you could be today at what time(that is to say, grace and circumstances
Acting on your own goodwill)
Will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
Gradually forming within you, will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
That his hand is leading you,
And accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
In suspense, and incomplete.

Amen