Take a deep breath. Breathe in through your nose and feel your chest expand as your lungs fill with air. Hold it there for second. Now feel your body relax as you slowly breathe out through your mouth. Repeat as many times as necessary.
“Take a deep breath” is timeless and ubiquitous advice given to everyone from women in labor to folks having panic attacks to children on the verge of a meltdown. Remembering to breathe, taking a deep breath, and focusing our attention on our breath has a way of calming us down. Much like the effects of being in nature we mentioned a couple weeks ago, focusing on taking deep breaths slows down our heart rate and lowers blood pressure.
On the second day of creation, God created an expanse between the waters below and the waters above and called this expanse, ‘Sky.’ While Rev. Wesley compared this expanse to an inverted snow globe, I think of it as creation taking a breath. The expanse that’s created is the earth’s lungs filling with air with air for the very first time. The picture on the worship bulletin last week (see picture below the sermon video) shows wind patterns over North America. It was a screenshot taken from the website
https://earth.nullschool.net/ where you can watch the earth breathe.
I stumbled on this mesmerizing animated map last week. It shows wind currents all over the world in real-time. You can twist, turn, and zoom in on any area of the globe and watch as the wind swoops and swirls across it’s surface. Seriously, check it out!
One of the most fascinating and profound images found in ancient Hebrew, is that the word ruah, is the same word used for breath, wind, and spirit. So in the beginning it was ruah that hovered over the face of the deep. And when God crafted a creature from the dirt, it was ruah that brought it to life. We receive ruah when we take our first breath and that same ruah returns to God when we breathe our last.
There’s a lot happening in the world right now—a lot of things that have the power and potential to make our hearts race and our blood pressure go up. Taking a deep breath won’t solve all our problems, but it will slow down our more reactive fight or flight impulses. So I encourage you to take a deep breath. Breathe deeply and remember that you have been born of the Spirit—that ruah moves in and through you.
In Love,
Pastor Annette