Breathe

Photo Credits: Stefano Zocca, Jeremy Bishop, unsplash.com

Breathing.

We must breath to live.

God sustains our very lives; gives us every breath.

What is breathing? It is an exchange. We take air in. Our lungs create a vacuum that pulls the air from the environment into our body. Our blood absorbs the oxygen, releases carbon dioxide. Our blood delivers oxygen to every cell in our body. That oxygen is life to us. We breath out, giving air back to our environment.

God made Adam from the dust of the earth, but it was just a body. It did not live until God breathed His breath of life into him. See Genesis 2:7. Ezekiel saw a valley of dry bones. It was not until he prophesied to the wind to breathe into them that they came to life and stood up. See Ezekiel 37.

I was amazed when I looked into the Hebrew. The Hebrew word for breath, wind, spirit is ruach. Ruach is spelled resh, vav, chet. Resh means head, vav means nail (attachment), and chet means wall that separates the inside from the outside, so together, they mean head or man with his inside separated from his outside (body), and thus can be seen the PATH that the air must travel. This clearly illustrates the path or pattern of inhaling and exhaling. The root, rach, means path, travel. It also refers to "The odor or scent of a thing as carried on the wind. To be "refreshed", as when taking in a deep breath." (Reference: http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/ahlb/resh.html )

So it is in our relationship with God. What is it that goes on as we meet with Him in the secret place? -an exchange. We make place for Him within us, breathe in His Spirit. We receive His life to sustain us. We breathe back out, giving Him all that we are, the praise of our lips. It is a revealing, a knowing, a communion.

But just as with breathing, we can't live forever on one breath. It must be ongoing, continual. Our relationship with God must be actively sustained or we die. There is no breath apart from Him. He is the air we breathe.

It is a comfort to know that He is as close to us as our every breath, and that He is so intimately in control of every second of our lives and all that touches us. So often we wonder where God is. He is Immanuel, God WITH us. Are you breathing Him in? Are you being refreshed with His life?