Tuesday, December 29, 2020

To Breathe

I've been thinking about the process of breathing more than I normally do.

It's winter, and when my wife and I go on walks together and see leafless trees all around, I look up at the intricate network of branches reaching out into the air, and I see the inside of a human lung.

Like countless others around the world, I eagerly await any update on the condition of a loved one whose lungs have been ravaged by COVID. My Dad cannot breathe, and would already be gone if not for the tireless work of his ICU team, and the machine that has been doing the breathing for him for the last month.

We still don't know if he will survive this, and if he does, what his condition will be. We pray it is still "him" in there, but we honestly don't even know that, and don't know when we might know.

I'm not accustomed to thinking about breathing, but this year has been, well...you know.

Lord, as You did in the Garden, breathe into us Your breath of life. Train us to draw You into ourselves, and convert this entering presence into whatever it is that allows us to think and speak like You do, love like You do, suffer, as You do, with anyone who cannot freely and fully and deeply breathe. 

We're made in Your image, so we instinctively rush to help someone who is stuck underwater, or who cannot get air into their lungs, but Lord, there's more. You became one of us and lived among us, experiencing firsthand our rejection, our oppression, our suffocating stubbornness and disbelief. 

In Your dying moments, You strained for every breath.

Continue to form us, breathe into us more and more. Let us strain for You the way you strained for air on the cross. When it's all too much for us, when our lungs don't seem to work, Lord, do the breathing for us, and surround us with saints committed to carrying us until we can breathe You in again.

And not just for ourselves do we ask this.

Breathe into us a selfless concern for all who cannot breathe, for all who strain against illness, against poverty, against hopelessness, against loneliness, against hatred, against a knee pressing down on their neck, against shame, fear, and judgment, against denial of humanity, denial of acceptance, denial of justice, denial of opportunity, denial of empathy, denial of love.

Give us the breath to share with Your children who are struggling to breathe.

May it never be only about us and ourselves.

I pray for my Dad's physical breath to return to him, and that he may somehow know You are present with him right now, as the rest of the world somehow keeps on moving while he cannot.

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