Breath

I was going to tell you all to close your eyes to imagine with me, but I guess that won’t work very well. Just make sure you imagine it somehow.

Imagine that it is a hot and muggy day. The kind that makes some of your toes hate the other toes for being so warm and making them (the first toes) hot. And vice versa. The kind that makes you want to stand up all day just so you don’t have to sit and touch anything. There’s no breeze, no clouds, just hazy sunlight.

Now as you are standing there…feeling hot, sticky, and generally miserable, imagine that a storm cloud sneaks in and covers the sun, and at the same time, a cool wind whips through your hair. You can hear the leaves of the palm trees (in my imagination, they’re palm trees) rattle, and if you listen very closely, you can hear the distant roar of the mother of all rainstorms inching its way toward you across the jungle. (Again, my imagination…I like jungles.)

There’s just something about that wind. You want to feel it across every pore in your skin, through every strand of hair…you want to close your eyes, tip your head back, and throw out your arms, as if you could almost….just maybe…fly.

The word for spirit in Greek is pneuma, which means “breath.” I love that. I love that I can associate the Holy Spirit with breath, with wind…something unseen, but incredibly powerful. Something that blows away the layer of dust that collects on my soul.

Take this a little further. While you are standing there, feeling all of the mugginess of the day blow away on the wind, you begin to feel a sprinkle of water from that rainstorm that’s coming. For one small second, you consider going inside where it’s dry…but then you breathe in the misty air and think of the stuffiness inside, and it seems like your soul has grown too large to be stuffed back into that small space. So you stay. The sheets of water drench your skin. Streams and rivers run down your face. You think that you just may be crying…but the tears mix silently with the rain and run down your face together.

There’s something exultant in the way the rain pounds the earth, and when it finally stops, you feel more alive than you have in a small forever.

John 4:13-14Jesus replied, "Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life."