Breath

As I sit here for the first time with no school to go to since August of 1995 and currently my job is what I like to refer to as a full-time sub, I'm at a whole new place in my life I've never been before.  I've always had school and a quasi-contractual job which gave me structure (sort of) and steady pay, but now I'm with out that.  So I sat down to plan out this semester my biggest goal was to draw myself closer to God and to do this by going through Genesis, Isaiah, Luke, and Romans.  Today I opened up Genesis and to my surprise in the midst of the creation story was something that I needed to hear, that I think after coming off a break we all need to hear.  In Genesis 2, God has just created THE WORLD and he needed someone to come and work the ground, so he created man.

THEN the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, 

and the man became a living being.¹

This is what kicked me this morning, that God breathed into our nostrils the breath of life, but how many times do we turn to other things to give us breath? Some of us just came off break, some not, some are back into the throws of school, some the throws of work, but regardless I'm willing to bet sometime in the past few weeks we went to some where else for a breather instead of The Lord.  I lean towards friends, attention, sports, books, and movies to recharge me when I should be looking towards God. None of these things will ever recharge us like God will, nor do they give us that first breath as God did, so why reward them? The LORD sustains us, and is greater than all these things, but for some reason we run towards these worldly pleasures to give us breath. I look towards these things, just as Eve looked towards the apple because they are pleasing to us.  Yet when Adam and Eve ate the apple, they hid from God in the garden and I don't want that.  We should not cower in fear, but yearn for God.   I want to be able to recharge and sit in the glory of his presence, not a movie theatre.  My goal and my prayer is that we turn to God when we need a breath of life, not some other vice when life begins to get tough in this next season of life.  That we run to him and nothing else, for he is the way, the truth, and the life. 

 Hope I didn't Jesus-Juke too many of you.²

1 I despise font changes in blogs, but felt this was a needed evil^↩

2 http://stuffchristianslike.net/2010/11/16/the-jesus-juke/^↩