Breath of God

All week I have been up at the YMCA Camp in Estes Park, first for Clergy Orders, and then for a cabinet meeting. What an inspiring place to meet! We are surrounded by snow covered mountains, reminding us of the grandeur of God’s grandeur and power. For weary clergy, it’s been a welcomed balm.

Because being a pastor isn’t easy. While the joke is that we only work on Sundays, the fact is clergy work long hours: studying, praying, preparing for worship, growing disciples, being with those who are sick, helping people navigate the courts, celebrating marriages, holding someone’s hand as they take their final earthly journey, encouraging children and young people, catching the tears of the broken-hearted, doing strategic planning for their church’s future, empowering leaders, making sure the church’s administrative work is in order, tending to their own souls.

While clergy have a particular role to play in the Body of Christ, every Christian is to have a 24/7 focus on the ways of Jesus and to continually reflect on how we are living it out in our own life and in the life of community. Each of us has a visible witness to make in the world about what the spiritual life looks like.

Sister Joan Chittister puts it this way, “Everyone gets up in the morning and breathes. The question is, what breath are you breathing out and what breath are you breathing in? How does your best friend and your family know that what you breathe is the breath of God and that it is different than just running through the paces of life?”

All week long, we have been breathing deeply up here at 8000 feet. While the air is thin at this elevation and required deep gulps of air until we acclimated, we’ve also been breathing in and out the breath of God, conscious of our life of faith. May you, as you rise in the morning, be mindful as you draw your first waking breath that you are breathing in God. What might happen if you spend the whole day consciously breathing in the breath of God?

May you be able to affirm, as Job did “The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” (Job 33:4)