God's Breath

Yesterday, I thought I was going to die.

I was sitting in the Unionaires Capitol Concert in the capitol building downtown. The building, and the music, are beautiful, awe-inspiring things. But in the middle of that beauty, I wasn't enjoying the moment. I was thinking about dying.

I'm sick. I have some sort of upper-resperatory hell going on that makes my chest hurt (along with my nose, head, sinuses, throat, and well, mostly just all of me), and my nose alternate between stuffy and runny, and I'm developing this cough deep in my chest that makes me feel as though my lungs are being torn forcibly from my body. These are the things I was contemplating during the concert; beautiful music wasn't making its way through the fog in my head very well.

As I sat there with my chest and head aching, I suddenly felt like my lungs were detaching from my body. It was a little hard to breathe, though nothing to be truly worried over, as it didn't exactly hurt very badly, and I wondered, "Hmm, perhaps this funny feeling of oneself being seperated in two is how it feels to die. You know, when your spirit leaves your body--when God's breath goes back to Him. I guess we don't know, since dead people aren't around to tell us about it."

(This seems morbid. It's not; I'm getting to the point--hang tight.)

Then I began to think about how the part of us that leaves our body and goes back to God when we die, the part we call His breath, is also the part that we call our spirit or heart or soul. It's what will be the same when Jesus comes again, when our bodies are new. It's our character, perhaps our personality. It's what identifies us; it's who we are.

It's God's breath. God breathes identity. He breathes heart, soul, spirit, character. Those our some of humanity's most sacred and mysterious concepts, across the spectrums of cultures and religions, and rightly so, because they are God's breath.

Then this morning I read an old post of Justin's on our group book blog, Silent Conversation. Part of it went like this:

Now I realize how exciting it will be when God tells me my real name. You see, I believe I have a name that is me. That is not merely a represenation, a symbol, but is truly me. It has no defintion except the soul that I am, and the body that I have. It's a completely unique identification of me.

And I think when God calls me, speaks to me, He uses my real name--He already knows it. And someday, when I hear it out loud I will know, and feel, Of course, this is me.

I agree with Justin entirely; our new names will be who we are because they will be breathed by God, and uncorrupted by sin. If God breathes identity, how could a name He spoke over you be anything but precisely who you are?

All language is metaphorical in our world. The word "flower" is not a flower; it will never be a flower, it only stands for a flower. But God's words--they aren't metaphorical. They are identity. That's why when God said "Let there be light!" light existed. He spoke it there; he breathed its identity.

I don't know if we feel our identity leave us when God's breath goes back to Him. I'm glad that yesterday, during the capitol concert, I didn't find out (and I don't intend to for quite a while, although I'm aware that I don't have a whole lot of say in the matter).

And I'm very glad to know that when God breathes, when He speaks, He creates identity. He can't help it. What does that mean when you feel God speaking to you?

He is breathing your identity over you, creating you continuously until the moment His breath--your soul and identity--returns to Him.

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
--C.S. Lewis