BREATH OF LIFE
Read time: 5 minutes
The first thing we do when we are born is to inhale; the last, at our death, is to exhale. In between is the constant, unconscious inhaling and exhaling of life.
As God breathes life into us at birth, we cry, not only because we experience the startling change from the warm and safe place of the womb to the cold of open air, but also because our soul innately recognizes that the intimacy we had enjoyed with God is different now — no less intimate, but somehow different this side of Heaven.
We inhale the life and love of God and exhale our life back to God, only to receive it again in our next breath. These countless inhalations and exhalations throughout our mortal lives make them holy — they are God with us and God in us. They are us in God.
We see our human journey as one of increasing independence and individuality — yet we are totally reliant on God for every breath. If God stopped loving and thinking of us even for a moment, we would simply cease to exist.*
We are individuals with free will. We make our own decisions yet, ironically, we find ourselves imploring God to save us from the consequences of some of those decisions.
God allows the natural consequences of our choices. God recognizes, I think with some sorrow, that sometimes learning comes the hard way.
Although we may feel abandoned at times, God never turns away. The story of “Footprints in the Sand” seems sentimental, but there is an underlying truth to it. **
Our purpose in life is to find our own path to receiving God’s love and releasing ourselves back into God’s love.
When we learn that our everyday distractions and stresses are the means to accept and trust that God is with us, we grow into a peace that doesn’t demand to be rescued, but works to change what can be changed and accepts what needs to be accepted (paraphrased Serenity Prayer) ***
We learn to be like children again — to simply “be”, with our hearts and hands open in wonder and amazement, which is the only appropriate response to God. This is wisdom that comes through experience, and experience often comes through our mistakes.
Our final breath is the gift of our life and our soul back to God for the last time.
I was present at my mother’s death. I watched her halted breathing through to her last — a double inhalation as though the second was one of wonder and surprise. Her last exhale seemed a sigh of relief and surrender. I watched, waiting for another, but there was no other. The magnitude of the moment overtook me.
Our final breath is God receiving us, no differently than at any other exhalation, except that with that last exhalation we return to complete union with God. We return home to everlasting peace.
We stop crying.
* COLOSSIANS 1, specifically Col 1: 16-17.
“…for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible… — all things were created through him and for him. He exists before all things and in him all things hold together…”
** FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND
One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.
Scenes from my life flashed across the sky. In each, I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints; other times there was only one.
During the low periods of my life I could see only one set of footprints, so I said, “You promised me, Lord, that you would walk with me always. Why, when I have needed you most, have you not been there for me?”
The Lord replied, “The times when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”
⁃ attributed to Mary Stevenson
*** SERENITY PRAYER
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
⁃ Reinhold Niebuhr