The Lurking Presence of God

“Our world is saturated with grace, and the lurking presence of God is revealed not only in spirit but in matter--in a deer leaping across a meadow, in the flight of an eagle, in fire and water, in a rainbow after a summer storm, in a gentle doe streaking through a forest, in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, in a child licking a chocolate ice cream cone, in a woman with windblown hair.  God intended for us to discover His loving presence in the world around us.”  Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

God rarely shouts for our attention.  He is often subtle and quiet.  Lurking, even.  Hoping we’ll perceive His presence in the room.  Hoping we’ll see that He has carefully and deliberately planted clues about Himself all around, hoping we’ll recognize them for what they really are.

Everything God has done is relevant.  Nothing He has done is irrelevant to who He is.  All creation.  All revelation.  Every inspired word of Scripture.  Every order He has put into place has a purpose greater than itself.  Everything we see exists not for itself.  Every encounter, every universal law, every person exists for a God-inspired purpose.

What is that purpose?  What exactly is the relevance of the oak tree in my backyard?  And just why should I concern myself with it?  And is there something about the celestial sky that has meaning?  What difference does it make if the planets rotate in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction on their axes?  Could the structure of a cell possibly tell me anything about the Creator of the universe?

Katanoeo

“I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.”
                                                                                             Psalm 77:12

“If your heart were right, then every created thing would be a mirror of life, and a book of sacred doctrine.  There is no creature so small and worthless that it does not show forth the goodness of God.”                                   Thomas Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

Mirrors of life.  Books of sacred doctrine.  We’ll miss them if we’re not paying attention.  It was Jesus Himself who taught us the importance of paying attention:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!” Luke 12:22-28

Consider the ravens.  Consider the lilies.   The Hebrew word is “katanoeo,” which means, literally, “to take note of.”  Essentially, Jesus is saying to us, "Look around! Are you taking notice?  Are you paying attention to the things around you?"

Jesus’ teaching style was to use familiar, everyday scenarios that His audience would relate to in order to teach Kingdom truths.  But was it God’s intention that all truth about the Kingdom would be tidily summarized in the several specific parables Jesus taught?

Is Scripture simply a historical narrative that not only contains truth, but is sole guardian of all of it?  Is it God’s wish that we limit our understanding of His nature and His ways to that which can be described by (and only by) birds and lilies, and the moon and the stars?  Is it His intention in giving these words to us that we accept them at face value?  That we not extrapolate them to our context? 

“Stop and consider God’s wonders.” Job 37:14

Or, might there be wisdom in the parables of Jesus deeper than what we see on their surface?  Was Jesus, in elucidating the specific Kingdom truth of those parables also teaching us, here in the 21^st century, how to observe life around us, looking for our own parables, for new Kingdom truths perhaps?  In imparting truth through the audiovisuals of His audience’s context, was Jesus also teaching us, in our personal discovery processes, to use the audiovisuals He gives us in the 21^st century?

The latter is the case.   In fact, Scripture itself teaches us to look at and to consider the things we see and experience as we think about God and His design and purposes for our lives.  Jesus Himself taught us that observing and reflecting on the things around us:  nature, relationships, social structures, stories and events, and so on, all can provide insights that have value to our spiritual lives.

Ever aware of His surroundings, Jesus modeled for us what it is like to appreciate all things as God-given truths, nothing less than divine insights into the way things are.  Mirrors of life.  Books of sacred doctrine.

God has placed life lessons all around us.  We just need to katanoeo.

Red Blood Cells and Platelets and Spleens, Oh My!

I did not get too far in my medical school training before there developed within me a profound sense that something was up.  The cadavers, the pathology slides, micro lab.  What had they to say?  Having come to faith as a boy, I was familiar with the passages in the Bible that spoke of the Church as Christ’s Body.  Over the years, I had heard plenty of sermons and Sunday School lessons on the subject of spiritual gifts, taken from 1 Corinthians 12:

“Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.  If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.  And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?  But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.  If they were all one part, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many parts, but one body.  The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”  On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.  If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.  Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”     1 Corinthians 12:14-27

Overwhelmed and over my head in textbooks, class notes, pathology slides and cadavers, I could not stop thinking about the metaphor of the "body" of Christ when thinking of the Church and how I had never heard it taken beyond the simplicity of hands and feet, eyes and ears, presentable parts and unpresentable parts.

Now, I believe “body” is a perfect metaphor when describing the Church.  I also believe, however, that God, in inspiring its use, knew (and knows) infinitely more about the human body than the first-century contemporaries of Paul.  Paul knew nothing of serotonin.  Nor could he have ever imagined the complexities of the respiratory control center of the medulla oblongata, or that ultraviolet rays from the sun caused malignant melanoma.  Neither Paul nor his hearers could have conceived that leprosy might be caused by a thing called a microorganism, a billion of which could reside in a drop of water.  Metaphoric language is useful only to the extent that those who hear it can identify with its terms. In likening the Church to the human body, then, Paul spoke of familiar things:  hands and feet, eyes and ears.

Of course, Scripture is replete with anthropomorphic language that so effectively communicates truth in the familiar terms of the human experience.  ^“Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean,” David prayed. “wash me, and I will be whiter than snow” (Psalm 51:7), his request not for a physical scrub down, of course, but a spiritual one.  “Blessed are those,” Jesus said, “who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”  People then, as today, so strongly identify with the physical experiences of hunger and thirst and being filled, that divine truth easily finds its mark in the minds of its hearers.

What of today?  What does it mean today that the Church is the body of Christ?  In considering timeless truths, can we, should we, need we, add new and fresh examples to the old ones?  In a day when we have catalogued the entire human genome, do we risk straying in to heretical territory if we add to Paul’s examples of hands and feet things like DNA, thyroid glands and fetal development?

Keep in mind, everyone in Paul’s day had a pancreas.  Fetuses went through the same phases of development for them as they do today.  People had diabetes, lupus, high cholesterol, and warts. “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight,” the writer of Hebrews reminds us (4:13a).  “Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered,” Jesus told his hearers (Matthew 10:30), not bothering to tell them that their white blood cells were probably also numbered. Wait... cell? What's a cell?

 If you and I, as Christ's Church, are His "body," then might we stand something to learn about the nature and workings of His Body by examining the nature and workings of our own body? And if Paul had known of red blood cells and platelets and spleens, would he in describing the Church have drawn them in to the parallel?  Perhaps.  Knowing about such things, can we today?

“I knew something sacred was at stake.”

                                                                       Ken Gire, The Reflective Life

Sacramental Mindfulness

“If I take seriously the sacred origin of this world, at the very least I must learn to treat it as God’s work of art, something that gave God enormous pleasure.”  Philip Yancey

Our basic inclination, as earthly creatures, is to hold physical and spiritual realities at arm’s length, sequestering one from the other.  We have been duped by modernity, which asks:  “If we can examine it, measure it, quantify it, analyze it and predict it, then what could possibly be divine about it?”  We have lost the reverence of what God has made.  Ken Gire, in his book, The Reflective Life quotes Abraham Heschel on this point:  “Let your conceit diminish your ability to revere and the universe becomes a marketplace for you.” (Abraham Heschel, God in Search of Man:  A Philosphy of Judaism).  Gire goes on to state:  “We can objectify the world or sanctify it.  When we objectify the world, we view it and all that is in it as existing solely for our use, whether that use is for pleasure or profit or patriotism.  When we sanctify the world, we view it and all that is in it with appreciation.  In doing so, we recognize them not simply as objects, but as objects created by God that in some way reflect Him and all that is dear to Him, the way a work of art in some way reflects the artist and what is dear to the artist’s heart.”

“We tend to confine the sacred to a fenced-in-area,” Philip Yancey states in Rumors of Another World, “the ‘spiritual,’ reserved for church activities.  Many people rarely give God a thought apart from an hour on Sunday morning, when they sing songs of praise, listen to a sermon, and then reenter the secular world as if passing through air lock.”

How do we rediscover, then, the art of seeing the divine in the ordinary, of regarding created things and created order less as physical, chemical, and physiological marvels so much as testimonials of their Originator?  Philip Yancey, in his book Rumors of Another World, articulates it best: “As a start,” he states, “I can aim to make daily life sacramental, which means literally to keep the sacred (sacra) in mind (mental).  In other words, I seek a mindfulness - a mind full- of God’s presence in the world.  I have no desire to escape the natural world, the pattern of Gnostics, desert monks, and fundamentalists who flee “worldliness.”  Nor do I deny the supernatural, the error of the reducers.  Rather, I want to bring the two together, to reconnect life into the whole that God intended.  This world, all of it, either belongs to God or it does not.  If I take seriously the sacred origin of this world, at the very least I must learn to treat it as God’s work of art, something that gave God enormous pleasure.”

Lord, God… Creator of all that is…. Creator of me… please awaken me to the reality of Your presence in the world you have placed me in.  Help me to see at least some of the “glimpses of truth Thou hast for me.”  Amen.

“In every act of creation God is present, waiting to be discovered.  The essence of the spiritual journey is the discovery of the presence of the sacred in everyday things, in everyday people, in everyday life.”  Leonard Sweet,  Soul Salsa

One Week From Today

Next Friday... in fact one week from this minute, a bunch of folks will be on the practice green and driving range, getting ready for the 12:30 shotgun start of our 1st Annual Starfysh Golf Scramble.  I had hoped to have filled up the course by now... 36 foursomes, 144 golfers.  But as it turns out we've got plenty of room left.

Hole in One Prize

And I'm asking if you who follow my blog would help me get word out to those you think would enjoy a fun round of golf for a good cause.  We've planned lots of contests and prizes and we'll serve up a nice steak buffet dinner immediately following golf.

In addition, if you have connections with businesses who might like to sponsor a hole or offer up some cool prizes or give-aways that we can give out that would help make the day that much more fun.

Please help me make this "1st Annual" a success.  Thanks.

Steve

PS Little detail...  folks can register online at www.starfysh.org  Deadline to register: Tuesday, Aug. 9th 

This Looking Business is Risky

So where does all this leave us?  On one hand, we see evidence of God all around.  On the other, we’re afraid to collect it for fear we might be led away from pure Scriptural truth. The safe thing to do would be to walk away, sacrificing the benefits in the interest of safety.  But can reward come without risk?  Along our paths of discovery, we must be mindful of the mines, the slippery slopes, and the baited traps.  

“This looking business is risky.”

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Legitimate dangers cause wary believers to wear side blinders through life, out of fear that non-biblical truths may cause them to stray.  As a result, they miss out on enjoying the results of God’s creative energies and, consequently, all that these creations might say about their Creator.

We can neither deny nor ignore the obvious Kingdom truths found in creation.  God has certainly intended that we consider…that we take note of… creation in our search for truths about the Kingdom.  He does not want us to miss the clues!  With discernment and all due caution, then, here’s where this all leaves us…

Filtering our thoughts and observations through the grid of Scripture, prayerful reflection, allowing the Holy Spirit to speak truth, and within the God-ordained community (church) He has placed us (1 John 4:6) we are safe to discover new truths about God.

My son, preserve sound judgment and discernment, do not let them out of your sight; they will be life for you, an ornament to grace your neck. Then you will go on your way in safety, and your foot will not stumble;  Proverbs 3:21-23

Cornelius Plantinga Jr. put it well...

"The Holy Spirit authors all truth, as Calvin wrote, and we should therefore embrace it no matter where it shows up.  But we will need solid instruction in Scripture and Christian wisdom in order to recognize truth and in order to disentangle it from error and fraud.

"Thoughtful Christians know that if we obey the Bible's great commandment to love God with our whole mind, as well as with everything else, then we will study the splendor of God's creation in the hope of grasping part of the ingenuity and grace that form it.  One way to love God is to know and love God's work.  Learning is therefore a spiritual calling:  properly done, it attaches us to God.

"Educated Christians therefore need to "know their Bible" in order to lead a life that fits in with the purposes of God.  But to reform a complex institution-- or, as a matter of fact, to write a law, treat a patient, or perform any of a number of other human undertakings-- you will need to gain wisdom from many sources in addition to Scripture.  You will need to look for truth wherever it may be found.” Engaging God's World--A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living

Leonard Sweet would agree.

“Jesus taught that whenever we discover truth, it is God who has taught us.  No book is so bad that you can’t get some truth out of it.  No person is without some truth to teach us.  No situation is without its truth.  God is instructing us in soul sciences and soul arts every second of every day.” Soul Salsa. 

So if God is the author and owner of all truth, it follows that examples of God’s authorship fill the libraries of the world.  And wherever we find truth we should, like the psalmist, celebrate our discovery as a God-given clue to His greatness and His character.  We come just that much closer to knowing what God is like through knowing a bit more about what He has created.

Five Dangers

It’s clear then.  All creation serves as God-evidence, revealing to us not only proof of His existence, but clues of His attributes… clues God wants us not to miss. 

Yet, while we dare not discount Romans 1:20 (For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse), we ought not to ignore the dangers of Romans 1:25 (They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised) either.

We need to be mindful of several dangers in looking at God’s creation for clues about His nature. 

Danger #1:  ignoring the essentiality of applying Scriptural truth to our human experience.  To our peril, we can become a truth unto ourselves and slide down the slippery slope of heresy, even idolatry.

Danger #2:  deifying Scripture rather than it’s Author.  Bibliolatry.  Dallas Willard refers to it as “Bible deism” (Hearing God). It is possible to make idols out of very sacred things… like church, like family, Scripture, even our own spirituality… elevating them to levels God doesn’t intend.  These things, essential as they are, can get in the way of knowing God, turning us into 21^st century Pharisees.

Danger #3:  Deifying the created.  In marveling at creation (as God wants us to do), we are baby-steps away from idolizing it.  The Enemy certainly knows this, and will use this fact to cause us to subtly slip into a pantheistic idolatry before we’ve recognize what’s happened.  Kempis, in his “Imitation of Christ” cautions that we not cling “to anything created with unmeasured affection.”

Danger #4:  Forgetting that the created is sin-tarnished.  If we forget or minimize the influence of sin on what God has made, we might, in turn, make wrong assumptions about God’s power and His nature.  We certainly aren’t reminded of God’s greatness when we see a smog-filled sky, for example.  Or a dying child.  What we see is evidence of how what God has created has been perverted by sin.

Danger #5:  Relativism.  We are but a few slippery steps from saying that all truth is God’s truth to saying that all versions of truth are true and, therefore, have originated from God.  We must be on guard for the lie of relativism.

He Speaks To Me Everywhere

God wants us to know Him.  To know Him personally and to know about Him.  What person in love doesn’t want to spend time with his or her soulmate, learning everything they can about them?  Really knowing someone goes way beyond a casual acquaintance.  It’s knowing them and everything about them.  What makes them tick.  Their past, their sense of humor, their interests.  Their quirks and idiosyncracies.  Their passions.  When we get to this point in relationship with God we are getting close to the soul-mate relationship for which He created us.

Through an ongoing relationship we get to know God and to grow in our knowing.  No matter where we are in our faith journey, each day can bring new discoveries and insights about Him.  We can know Him better today than we did yesterday.

Life with God is a life of anticipation and expectation.  "Abundant life," Jesus called it. A reason to get up in the morning.  A reason to get up early.  A reason to be alert, to stay engaged, to participate!  A reason to not deaden our senses with drugs or alcohol.  A reason to pay attention, to take notes, to journal.  A reason to pray, to study, to ask questions.  And permission to sleep at night, knowing that your day was not spent in vain… for you know God just a little bit better.

And it’s not just physical, measurable things that give testimony to the attributes of God.  The unseen also does.  Migration patterns of birds.  Laughter.  Emotions.  The dance of honey bees about their hive.  Gravity.  Heat.  Wind.  Sounds and smells.  Interactions between children at play.  “How little of creation,” Philip Yancey remarks, “do we humans understand, much less control:  the wonders of instinctual behavior, the rhythms of nature that go on whether any humans observe them or not, the comparative smallness of human beings” (Rumors of Another World).

This is my Father’s world,

And to my listn’ning ears

All nature sings, and round me rings

The music of the spheres.

This is my Fathers world;

I rest me in the thought

Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas--

His hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father’s world.

The birds their carols raise;

The morning light, the lily white

Declare their Maker’s praise.

This is my Father’s world.

He shines in all that’s fair;

In the rustling grass I hear Him pass;

He speaks to me ev’rywhere.

This is my Father’s world.

Oh, let me ne’er forget

That though the wrong seems oft so strong,

God is the Ruler yet.

"He speaks to me everywhere." God has placed each of us in "rustling grass" fields filled with spiritually-significant truths, hoping that we’ll see them.  My fields happen to be patient rooms, medical journals, flower beds, and a precious Haitian island. Wherever your fields, be on the lookout! Clues and evidence of our amazing Creator are all around.

Grand Rapids Mud Run

Join Team Starfysh in taking on the mud at the...

2011 Grand Rapids Mud Run

Saturday, August 27, 2011

To be a member of the Starfysh team...

1.  Find some friends to run with. You don't want to do this alone!

2.  Register at GrandRapidsMudRun.com
Groups of various types will run every hour on the hour throughout the morning and afternoon.  Choose the category and time that fits you.  Team Starfysh runners will not all run at once.  We will be scattered throughout all heats throughout the course of the day.

3.  Once you have secured your spot(s), contact us (steve@starfysh.org) with your name, contact info (phone, email) and shirt size.

4.  Get in shape! Though crazy and fun, this is a 5K.

5.  When you arrive at the event, stop by the Starfysh display to pick up your t-shirt ($5 suggested donation).

6.  After your run (walk, crawl, slither) stop back by our booth for your congratulatory Gatorade.

Sign up soon! This event could fill up!

Breath-Taking

Consider breathing.  Thankfully, breathing takes place in the background of our day-to-day. And, though we value it, we generally don't have to think much about our breathing.


If you think about it, breathing is a spiritual exercise. The word spirit might literally be translated as breath.   Holy Spirit literally means Holy Breath.

If “Spirit” is “Breath,” then spirituality is breath-ing.  Leonard Sweet, in his book, Soul Salsa, puts it this way. “A spiritual life is one that breathes out the ‘breath of life.’ The body is God-breathed.  It cannot help but breathe with regularity.  The soul must will itself to breathe and live.  It gasps for air until it finds its breath.  Hence the Sabbath.  The root of Sabbath means ‘to catch one’s breath.’ The faster and fuller you exhale, the more you need to inhale.  The Bible is designed to transform your life.  One of the biggest transformations is the formation of multilingual souls:  souls that have learned the languages of exhaling and inhaling, of speech and silence, the interior rhythms of space and time.

“In other words, to breathe new being into the soul, we need to decentralize our Sabbath keeping.  Sabbath does not come just once a week.  Every day needs a holy hiatus. Every week needs to be well ventilated with sabbaticals.”  

Many regard Sabbath simply as a day to “catch our breath” from the past week.  We see it as a recovery time and only that.  The “day of rest” should rest-ore, after all, right?  We look forward to it like marathon runners look forward to the end of their race:  a time to collapse and catch our breath.  But is there more to Sabbath-keeping than simply restoring the breath spent during the race of the preceding week?  Or do we ask, “Restoring our breath…. for what?”  For what future purpose might God be re-storing our breath? 

We have reduced the notion of rest to mean only recovery and in recovery our attention is on the past:  recovering from long hours, hectic schedule, etc., etc. In this reduction we miss a major point:  that rest is an appointment with God, a divine nexus where recovery from yesterday and preparation for tomorrow collide.

We have assumed that when God rested on Creation’s seventh day, that  he was, in a sense, recovering from Divine Exhaustion.  What if “rest” does not, in fact, mean “recovery”?  What if God’s “day of rest,” of breathing, has value intrinsic to itself, apart from other days of the week?  Breathing for breathing’s own sake?  I think we can learn something from Isaiah’s prayer: “My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you.” (Isaiah, 26:9a)  I love the way he puts it… “my spirit longs for you.”  He could have just as easily said, “my spirit yawns for you in the night;  in the morning my spirit yawns for you.”  “I am so air-hungry for you.  I desperately need a deep, deep breath of You.  Please give me some of Your Holy Air.”  “Holy Spirit, come and fill this place,” the songwriter put it.  “Holy Breath, come and fill this place,” we might also sing it.  Spiritual air hunger.  In the morning, at the beginning of his day, Isaiah’s spirit… his breath, longed for the Lord!  In the morning, before the day’s activities, Isaiah inhaled deeply.  Not in exhaustion, but in preparation for what God had in store for him that day.

We need air.  At the beginning and end of our day, at the beginning and end of our week, and at the beginning and end of our year, our career, our project, our ministry… we need to rest:  To inhale deeply and experience the deep, refresh-ing, ready-ing breath of God.  We need to breathe… for breathing’s own sake. We need to live lives “well ventilated with sabbaticals.”  Every breath one of recovery and of preparation.  Each breath a rest, appointed by God.  Each breath a praise to Him, acknowledging His sovereignty over our lives.


Our walk with God is breathtaking only to the extent that we are Breath-taking.

Two Weeks from Today

The golfer who hits a hole-in-one on hole #8 of the 1st Annual Starfysh Golf Scramble will win this loaded 2011 Ford Fiesta.  In fact, all four of the par three's will have great hole in one prizes (Caribbean cruise for two, airline tickets, Sony Playstation 3).  Just sayin...

Friday, August 12th
The Golf Club at Thornapple Pointe
Registration deadline:  August 9th

Register Now

Please help me fill the course with golfers by spreading word in your circles. The more golfers we have the more water filters we can place.

Thanks folks!
Steve

Thornapple Pointe Hole 8:  Beautiful 165-Yard Par 3
A hole-in-one here wins a new 2011 Ford Fiesta

Mobile Money

I didn't downsize this picture because I want you to look closely at it.  Seems boring enough... it's a picture of remote mountain regions on the island of La Gonave, Haiti.

Click on the picture to zoom in a bit and you'll see, way out in the distance on the top of that hill, a cell phone tower.

The one "infrastructure" that has changed alot in Haiti is that of communication. It is a strange reality that most people in Haiti, including the poorest peasants, carry a cell phone.  (Digicel, the main cell phone company in the country) and Voila have invested millions in developing the cell tower network that covers much of Haiti and in making cell phones widely available at low cost to millions of Haitians.

In addition to the voice communication they provide, the use of cell phones for "mobile money" or "cellular banking" (the transfer of funds from one cell phone to another) is picking up steam.  Check out this 3 minute video on how it works: Mobile Money

This technology will no doubt play a role in Starfysh's strategies in future years as we move forward with our development work.

Breath

“the Lord God formed a man’s body

from the dust of the ground

and breathed into it the breath of life,

And the man became a living person.”  Genesis 2:7

Do you see it?  No, I mean literally, do you see “it”?  Look there, that little word “it,” tucked quietly in the middle of line three.  Little and inconspicuous.  But don’t miss it.  God breathed into it (the man’s body) and “it” THEN became a living person.

It is possible to have a body without the breath.  But the body cannot live without the breath of God.  The body remains lifeless until God’s breath enters us.  Breath brings life.  No breath, no life.

Is it possible that, when Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10), He was referring to the fact that life before and without the Breath of God, is not really living at all?

God is a God of breathing our Source of in-spir-ation.  The root “spir” here is the same word the apostle John used when he said, ^”The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” (John 6:62). Very literally, then, His words are the breath we take in.  He breathed the world into being.  And He breathes life into us.  Until then we’re just corpses.  Organized dust. Form without function. Existing but not living.  Bodies without Breath.

Re-Summoned

Evaluation of breathing is one of the most common and important assessments that doctors and nurses perform.  With stethoscope on chest we get our patient to breathe deeply.  For adults we simply ask them to take a deep breath.  For infants we might blow gently in their face which causes them to inhale deeply.

Some patients, however, just won’t breathe deep for us.  No matter what you say or do, they simply will not take a breath!

You can politely ask them to breathe.  You can sternly command them.  You can show them how you breathe and why you enjoy breathing.  You can plead with them, bribe them, guilt-trip them, even threaten them.   You can startle, frighten, or tickle them.  You can blow in their face.  You can tell them how popular it is to breathe, that many of their friends breathe.  You could try reasoning with them, giving them, say, four good reasons they should at least give breathing a try.  You might present them with survey results showing that people who breathe lead much more successful lives than those who don’t.  You could walk them through the complex physiology of breathing or maybe show them the latest research revealing convincing evidence that breathing prolongs life.  You can show them results of a poll showing them that 99% of all respondents believe that regular breathing is good.  Still, they will not breathe.

  

They are the most obstinate of patients. Unwilling, even to listen.  I have never been successful nor I have never heard of any of my colleagues being successful nor are there reports in the medical literature any instances of doctors having success at convincing this sort of patient to take a deep breath.

Tactics fail.  No matter how well prepared for and presented.  No matter our sincerity, concern, and good intentions… patients in cardiac arrest simply will not take a deep breath.  They won’t listen, nor will they respond.  Ever.

One hope remains.  Resuscitation.  In this instance, breath must be placed into the patient.  Breath from elsewhere.  Breath from Elsewhere.

We are inclined, sometimes, to forget that people to do not find Breath merely because we want them to.  Strong and well-executed apologetics can fall short.  Christian celebrity testimonials may fall short.  Saturation marketing falls short.  Television advertising, slick evangelistic tools, polished seeker-targeted programs fall short.

Imbedded deeply, yet significantly, within the word “resuscitate” is the Latin word “citar,” which means “to summon” or “to call.”  It is God Who calls, not us.  When we are resus-citated, we are literally “re-summoned”….called again to enjoy life.  “Summon me and I will answer,” Job prayed.

A patient in true cardiopulmonary arrest will die without external intervention.  A dead man can do nothing to save himself.  ^“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”  Ephesians 2:8   Breathless we lay, dying.  Unable to help ourselves.  God then, in mercy, stoops down and freely offers us His Breath.  Resuscitative breath.  Reviving breath.  “Re-summoning”  breath.

The summons comes from God.  He alone resuscitates.  The only hope for we who are dead is that our lungs would expand with the Holy Breath of God.  Divine CPR.  Through no effort of our own, God in His mercy performs His resuscitative work on us.

“Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your unfailing love, O LORD, and grant us your salvation.”  Psalm 85:6-7 

A Good Thing

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”

                                                                          Psalm 150:6

Martha Stewart, goddess-of-household-perfection, made it one of her trademark bylines:  “It’s a good thing.”   Fluffy crepes served with fresh-squeezed orange juice?  “It’s a good thing.”  A bed of fragrant lavender lining the garden path?  “A good thing.”  Homemade decorations adorning the freshly harvested, fifteen foot Christmas tree in the great room?   All very good things.”  I wonder how many homemakers have committed hari-kari trying to keep up with Martha.

What are the “good things” in our lives? Blessings like family, health, a new job come to mind.  In the day-to-day, we might be thankful for running water, nice weather, a fun vacation, even a good night’s sleep.  But when is the last time you heard someone say they were thankful that their body temperature was well-regulated or that their digestion was going well?

Funny, isn’t it?... that the things most critical to minute-to-minute survival are those that we take most for granted.  Crucial, life-sustaining body functions like our beating heart, digesting food, and body temperature regulation are those we don’t need (thank God) to think much about (leaving time for the conscious decisions about things not nearly so important:  What shirt should I wear?  Should I mow the lawn today?  Should I get single or double pepperoni on my pizza?).

Take breathing, for example.  While we all would agree breathing is definitely a “good thing,” we tend not to think nor talk much about it.  It’s just one of those processes in the background of daily life.  All that we do every day is done against the background of breathing and we really just aren’t aware of it.

Breathing is one of the many body processes that are under the control of the autonomic nervous system.  (Whenever you see the word “autonomic,” think “automatic.”)  Lots… in fact, most of the processes in our bodies that are absolutely necessary for day-to-day survival are under autonomic, that is automatic control.  Think about it, we do not have to consciously tell our hearts to beat, our kidneys to excrete, our bowels to digest, or our marrow to make blood.  We do not have conscious control over ovulation, body temperature regulation, or sweating.  (By the way, you might, from time to time, thank God for your autonomic nervous system.  Because of it, you can fall to sleep at night without worrying that you might forget to breath, or to secrete enough insulin to deal with that bedtime snack.  Without your autonomic nervous system you’d be so busy with such issues that you would never be able to get around to cleaning the garage).  But because breathing is automatic, most of us take it for granted.

Until there is a problem with it.

In “To Kill a Mockingbird” Scout makes the statement, “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”  She makes an interesting point.  We don’t particularly “love breathing.”  When is the last time you heard someone say they loved to breathe?  Yet, while we may not “love breathing,” we do need it.  We may not “love breathing,” but our life depends on a regular habit of it.  We may not “love breathing,” but take it away from us and we’ll learn to love it real fast.  We tend to value most that which we fear losing.  For proof, look into the panicked eyes of someone suffering an asthma attack.  Notice the worried expression of a patient depending on a ventilator to breath for them.  Seems it is when we cannot get our breath that we cherish breathing most.

The psalmist had something to say about good things.  “They who seek the LORD shall not be in want of any good thing” (Psalm 34:10b), he once said.  “No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” (Psalm 84:11b).  James, too, spoke of good things when he said that “every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above…” (James 1:17a).

Breathing. It’s a good thing.