I’ve been reading a lot recently. Sitting in the comfortable old upholstered chair by the front window, I’ve leaned back, lost in the wonder and peril, and the hours have flown before I knew it.

I realized something the other night while reading, though. I’ve talked about it with the Lovely Lady and she’s not sure she agrees, but since she doesn’t disagree, I could be right.

I could be. Perhaps.

The world outside my window is a living, breathing organism. And somehow, we can choke it to death or lend it our breath.

Stick with me now.

What happened is this: Often, I don’t listen well when reading (just ask her about that), but I gradually became aware of the sound. As first, I thought someone in the next room was breathing rather loudly, but as I stopped to listen, it became clear. The world outside was actually breathing! It sounded like an asthmatic old man, but it was breathing.

Heee. Hooo.

Heee. Hooo.

Well, I said it became clear, but it wasn’t long before I realized the sound I was hearing was actually the tree frogs in the trees around our house. A chorus would start nearby—Heee—and the chorus up the road a bit would answer, the distance separating them making it seem as if there was a different pitch—Hooo.

Inhale, exhale.

Inhale, exhale.

The world is breathing.

I still think I could be right. Stick with me a little longer.

The Apostle told the amateur philosophers in Athens that everything in the earth had life and breath because of our Creator. (Acts 17:25)

To this day, we continue to live and move—and exist at all—because He sustains us. (Acts 17:28)

But I suppose it’s not the tree frogs that are evidence of the inhale and exhale of the world that lives around us. Not really.

Still, I contend that we have the power to choke or to replenish the breath of life to the world given us by our Creator.

I don’t just mean nature, either. Many have written and spoken about our responsibilities there and I don’t disagree. But, I have a more human aspect in mind.

On the Sunday afternoon just past, I heard the breathing again. I’m sure I did.

An invitation had come a week or so ago, suggesting that we might like to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of a friend with him and his family.

We thought we would, and so it was that we found ourselves in the social hall of a retirement village in a neighboring town. We had waited until the early arrivals cleared out a bit, so there wasn’t such a crush around our old friend.

I sat beside him and the memories came back with a rush. Forty years—give or take a couple of years—it has been that I’ve known him (much longer for the Lovely Lady, who grew up with his children).

All those years ago, he taught me how to breathe. Well, not really, but it seems so now.

In my teen years, I had developed a kind of stage fright that guaranteed I would never stand in front of a crowd and do anything by myself. Every time I attempted it, I could feel the heat rise from my neck, up into my face, as I turned a bright crimson red and became unable to continue. It had happened too many times. I would never—never— attempt it again.

He was patient. A little.

Planting the seed and encouraging me for a few weeks, he convinced me that all it would take to lead the singing in our little church was for me to stand there and sing along with the people. The only talking I needed to do was to call out a hymn number.

I was terrified and refused. Again and again.

He wouldn’t give up on me. Again and again, he asked. Just one more time than I refused, he asked.

I didn’t turn red. I didn’t freeze up. The people sang. I sang. I couldn’t believe it.

Since that time, I’ve been able to lead music many times. I’ve even preached numerous times.

Not once has the old fear returned. Not once.

Someone breathed encouragement into my lack of confidence, courage into my fear. He taught me how to breathe on my own.

I sat, last Sunday afternoon, remembering his kindness and was lost in the past for a moment or two before realizing that he was talking again.

I’ve written numerous times about the house the Lovely Lady and I moved into last year, the house in which she grew up. Her uncle built the structure, back in the nineteen-forties, and her family—first another aunt and uncle, then her mother and father—has lived here since.

I didn’t know that my old friend had helped to build the house, too.

“Oh yes, I helped to work on the foundation of that house. I remember taking the wire from the forms around the cement.”

I had no idea.

He laid the foundation to the house in which I live today.

I know now.

Need I go on? Would it be possible to miss a truth so obvious?

We breathe our life into the world around us, laying the foundation for a living breathing body which, in the next generation—or in the one after that, or the ten after that—will breathe its life into the world around it.

We breathe our life into the world around us, laying a foundation for a living breathing body which will breathe its life into the world around it. Click To Tweet

What if we refuse?

Selfish, rude, ignorant kids! What a waste of space!

I was all of that and more. And still, they breathed into my life.

What if they hadn’t?

What if we won’t?

Outside, the frog chorus has begun again.

Inhale. Exhale.

Breathe.

 

 

It’s Your breath in our lungs
So we pour out our praise
We pour out our praise
It’s Your breath in our lungs
So we pour out our praise to You only

And all the earth will shout Your praise
Our hearts will cry, these bones will sing
Great are You, Lord
(from Great Are You, Lord ~ Leonard/Ingram/Jordan ~ © Essential Music Publishing, Capitol Christian Music Group)

 

 

Then he said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to the winds, son of man. Speak a prophetic message and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, O breath, from the four winds! Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again.'”
(Ezekiel 37:9 ~ NLT ~ New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.)

 

 

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2018. All Rights Reserved.