100 Days of HopeSample

A Mere Breath

We often treat our lives as if they have a certain endurance and stability. But their fragility is revealed by our complete dependence on every single breath we take. We do not make or earn these breaths. They are God’s gift of common grace, every one. Moreover, each breath is also the gift of God’s own breath. In the primeval act of life-giving, God exhaled the breath of life into Adam and he “became a living being” (Gen 2:7). Job also refers to “the spirit of God in my nostrils” (27:3).

We are alive at this instant because God’s own breath is in us. How amazing, then, that we usually pay so little attention to breathing: in and out. But if the next breath were not there, we would rapidly cease to care about anything else. The platform of our lives, seemingly solid, balances on an ever-rising, reed-thin column of millions of unnoticed breaths, each of them absolutely indispensable and irreplaceable. “If [God] should…gather to himself his spirit and his breath,” Job says, “all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust” (34:14-15).

In unexpected moments, may you be blessed with the sudden remembrance that God is as near to you as the last breath that you have unthinkingly drawn. Know that you hold, in your lungs, at that very moment, an infinite and priceless treasure. And then offer it back to the giver by forming your exhalation into a sacrifice of gratitude: “thank you.”

Prayer: Almighty God, I thank you that you are ever with me and that you sustain me with your life-giving breath. Thank you for your Spirit that lives in all who follow Christ. May we strive to remember how close and how active you are in our lives.