Breathe
"Do me a favor."
"What?" I asked.
"Breathe."
I heaved my lungs and felt a weight upon them. It was as if they had collapsed and I was refilling them with air. Breathe. Breathe.
I breathed.
And woke up.
Wide awake. It's 3am.
Eventually I went back to sleep, but I didn't forget about my dream and what it felt like to breathe again.
Later on, it occurred to me that in the midst of so much stuff we can often forget to practice the God given gift that is supposed to remind us of His mercy and grace every second of our lives: breathe.
My dream may have little to no significance, but it serves as a reminder that we can get strangled and choked by the things that are going on around us and within us and if we don't breathe, we won't feel the weight lifting off our lungs.
God invites us to breathe, both in the pulmonary way and the spiritual way. We are created to breathe oxygen and we are created to breathe the living, and life giving Word-of-God-air.
We breathe and fill in our lungs with what we breathe in. So what are you filling your lungs with? Air? Is it good air? Does it have a poisonous amount of carbon and criticism? Are you suffocating in stress and going everywhere at once? Or are you breathing in musty mildew and are lackadaisical in devotion, upkeep, and wellbeing?
What we breathe in, we breathe out. (Rocket science.)
And when we breathe in peace, we'll breathe it out. Breathe in God, you'll breathe Him out, so to speak.
I get caught trying to gulp in more air than I have the capacity to hold sometimes. And other times my breath comes shallow and quivery and I slowly fade. Neither are good. Neither will guarantee life. Abundant life, that is.
I might be feeling God calling me to a lot of things right now, but somehow I think that He's trying to get the point across that He only has a simple favor to ask: Breathe.
It's a suggestion to breathe in God-goodness and God-grace; a prompting to lift up the chest and fill the lungs and feel that weight slide, slip, and be-gone. An invitation to run till heart pumps hard and lungs are rejoicing with red and oxygen and all that life-air.
You might be in the midst of a huge to do list and have a thousand people asking you to do a million things, but for right now, realize that God is asking you to just do one thing: breathe.
"What?" I asked.
"Breathe."
I heaved my lungs and felt a weight upon them. It was as if they had collapsed and I was refilling them with air. Breathe. Breathe.
I breathed.
And woke up.
Wide awake. It's 3am.
Eventually I went back to sleep, but I didn't forget about my dream and what it felt like to breathe again.
Later on, it occurred to me that in the midst of so much stuff we can often forget to practice the God given gift that is supposed to remind us of His mercy and grace every second of our lives: breathe.
My dream may have little to no significance, but it serves as a reminder that we can get strangled and choked by the things that are going on around us and within us and if we don't breathe, we won't feel the weight lifting off our lungs.
God invites us to breathe, both in the pulmonary way and the spiritual way. We are created to breathe oxygen and we are created to breathe the living, and life giving Word-of-God-air.
We breathe and fill in our lungs with what we breathe in. So what are you filling your lungs with? Air? Is it good air? Does it have a poisonous amount of carbon and criticism? Are you suffocating in stress and going everywhere at once? Or are you breathing in musty mildew and are lackadaisical in devotion, upkeep, and wellbeing?
What we breathe in, we breathe out. (Rocket science.)
And when we breathe in peace, we'll breathe it out. Breathe in God, you'll breathe Him out, so to speak.
I get caught trying to gulp in more air than I have the capacity to hold sometimes. And other times my breath comes shallow and quivery and I slowly fade. Neither are good. Neither will guarantee life. Abundant life, that is.
I might be feeling God calling me to a lot of things right now, but somehow I think that He's trying to get the point across that He only has a simple favor to ask: Breathe.
It's a suggestion to breathe in God-goodness and God-grace; a prompting to lift up the chest and fill the lungs and feel that weight slide, slip, and be-gone. An invitation to run till heart pumps hard and lungs are rejoicing with red and oxygen and all that life-air.
You might be in the midst of a huge to do list and have a thousand people asking you to do a million things, but for right now, realize that God is asking you to just do one thing: breathe.
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