Breath

Meet my new granddaughter, Elouise Fern!  This pic is from the precious moments as I held her close and listened carefully to her breath.  Imagine learning to breathe!  For all those months in her mother, and now breathing air!  What a joy to feel her breathe - sometimes slow and sometimes fast... as all newborns do.  Praise God for life - what a gift life is!  As listen I am thinking that Breath = life.

I've sat at the bedside of the dying, with their labored, tired breaths, waiting as breath slows and becomes erratic... and stops.  Such experiences makes this opportunity to hold a newborn baby and listen to her breathe even more special, even holy.

We are told in John 20, that Jesus met his disciples in the Upper Room where they were hiding and "breathed on them".  Then he told them to receive the Holy Spirit.  Breath, wind, spirit...

In Genesis 2, God breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of the first man -

In Genesis 1 - we see the Spirit of God as the wind hovering over the chaos before creation.

The Holy Spirit lives within us, enabling us to live the abundant life - the life of embodying Love - being love for others.  Breathing in and out - learning to love as effortlessly as we breathe.
Breath, Life, Love.