Your Last Breath, And Breathing Till Then

“ GOD formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive—a living soul!” Genesis 2:7 (MSG) “The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”Job 33:4 (NIV) I have witnessed it many times, someone taking their last breath. That’s all that separates life from death – one breath. You can almost see it, life leaving on the wings of that last exhale. The transformation is instant and decay visibly and almost instantly moves into that now hollow shell of a body. The Spirit, the soul, life has departed and you can sense the sacredness of the moment.We hardly ever think about the value of just one breath, or the next breath, or how close to the edge of life each breath really is. There is grace in the fact that most of our breathing is a subconscious, automatic activity. Living life would be very difficult if every breath required conscious effort. But every now and then God confronts us with how precious, how wonderful, how great a gift life and breath really is.Each breath allows us to live, gives us an opportunity to bless or curse, to sing or complain, to worship or ignore God who gave us breath. And it does make a difference what you live and breathe for. At the end of our last breath, the objections of the atheist or doubter none withstanding, we don’t cease to exist. At end of breathing our last we are summoned to give account (Romans14:12; Hebrews 9:27) how we spend the gift our life, what we did with what each breath enabled us to do.As a kid I loved the first autumn mornings cold enough to reveal my breath. On the way to school my friends and I would pretend to be smoking. Ironic, we admired something with our breath that actually robs you of your ability to breathe. That’s how it is, things that rob us of life and breath usually dress up nice in the beginning. Life is full of a million invitations to waste your breath, to lead us down the path where your last breath reeks of regret.How different God’s invitation, God’s challenge to us. At the end of the collection of songs and poems called the Psalms. At the end of pages filled with pain, worry, fears, highs, incredible lows, repentance, agony, deliverance, and goodness this is the invitation of God, “Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD” Psalm 150:6 (NIV).How I pray that both your last breath and mine, and all our breathing and living until then, will give wings to our praise of God and Christ.To God be all glory, love you, Pastor Hans