Tag: ‘Breathe’

BREATH

george gaffgaLeave a comment

My mom died in 2014. She could not get a good breath of air. She had COPD. But for the skill and kindness of Hospice she would have agonizingly suffocated. People who have suffered from the effects of COVID 19 on their lungs know all too well the gift of breath.

Breath was give to Adam and Eve. Breath came to the dry bones in the valley and they came alive (Ezekiel 37). Breath is a gift from God (Isaiah 42). Breath is sacred. And in the case of George Floyd, that gift was taken away by an act of evil.

I consider how many times the breath of black people has been taken away throughout our nation’s history. Time and time again their lives have been cut short by drowning, lynching, and a myriad of other ways. Their freedom to breathe has been extinguished by white people.

African Americans and other people of color want to breathe again. They want the same access to life that the rest of us have.

The riots in our streets are the choking cries of people who can’t breathe, people who have been suffocating under the giant knee of racism for so many years. Some people might say, ‘But look at the progress made by and for the African Americans over the years.’ Malcolm X once responded that if you plunge a knife nine inches into someone’s back and pull it out six inches you couldn’t call that progress.

We are all longing for a fresh breath of God given air. That’s what God wants for us. Let us hope and pray that in some better way we can all surface after this deluge of racism, murder, and street violence to once again breathe. Together.

There are some great words from a group called All Sons and Daughters. Let them be our anthem just for today.

Great Are You Lord

All Sons & Daughters

You give life, You are love
You bring light to the darkness
You give hope, You restore
Every heart that is broken
Great are You, Lord

It’s Your breath in our lungs
So we pour out our praise
We pour out our praise
It’s Your breath in our lungs
So we pour out our praise to You only

You give life, You are love
You bring light to the darkness
You give hope, You restore
Every heart that is broken
Great are You, Lord

 

 

 

What Is God Waiting For?

george gaffgaLeave a comment

Sometimes I think that God wants to lavish God’s goodness on us more than we want to seek God out but God withholds such extended grace until we are ready to receive that grace as individuals and as the corporate people of God, until that grace works effectively in God’s world for God’s glory and for our good.

I refer you to Jeremiah 29 where God says to the people, ‘if you seek me with all your heart you shall find me.’ That’s a big ‘if’. It seems to be a condition as when God tells the people:  2 Chronicles 7 “If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place.”

I wonder if that was what was going on when Jesus would not answer the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7) who asked for help for her daughter. Was he helping her and the disciples to understand that God waits for us all to be ‘ready’ to receive from God?

Is that perhaps why Jesus told the crowds of people to seek first the Kingdom of God and everything else needed would be added? (Matthew 6)

I’m just not sure even about my own faithfulness in seeking, desiring, longing for God. I am striving to be better but I see how weak my longing is unless I am perhaps desperate in a crisis situation, but I should always be desperate for God. Isn’t that a line in a contemporary Christian song, ‘I’m desperate for you.’ Yes, I just looked it up. ‘Breathe’ is the name of the song.

I remember Keith Green’s song where he sings, ‘My flesh is tired of seeking God but on my knees I’ll stay, I want to be His pleasing child until that final day.’ The bolded type is the title of the song.

I must admit that indeed the flesh is tired. Even too tired at times to start let alone to continue our prayers. I found myself this morning just spending time praying, God I want to know your will and do your will even if I don’t know it. (Thomas Merton wrote a great prayer about that.) I do think we can know God’s will. That’s what Paul writes in Romans 12:2. But how much do we really want to know? How much do we want to seek?

Wow, here’s a prayer for all of us from Psalm 27: …Hear, O LORD, when I cry with my voice, and be gracious to me and answer me.  When You said, “Seek My face,” my heart said to You, “Your face, O LORD, I shall seek.”  Do not hide Your face from me, Do not turn Your servant away in anger; You have been my help; Do not abandon me nor forsake me, O God of my salvation!”

But let’s see if it is true. Let us all implore God more. Seek God more intensely and see if we don’t ‘FIND’.

Let me close with a quote from John Chrysostom (Archbishop of Constantinople in the 4th Century):

Our soul should be directed in God, not merely when we suddenly think of prayer, but even when we are concerned with something else.  If we are looking after the poor, if we are busy in some other way, or if we are doing any type of good work, we should season our actions with the desire and the remembrance of God.  Through this salt of the love of God we can all become a sweet dish for the Lord.  If we are generous in giving time to prayer, we will experience its benefits throughout our life.