Breath of Life

To each of us a precious gift was given, everyone reading this blog is using the gift, but not all may appreciate it. Some may squander it, and others my neglect it, dome may celebrate it and a few will disregard it.

Gifts are always a delight, who doesn’t want to receive a gift? We all like getting one, small, big, expected or a total surprise, gifts are just fun to get. We smile, and get a little excited. If it’s wrapped we admire the wrapping paper, for at least a few seconds before we tear it off. And the excitement of what’s inside builds until we get to it.

We love the process of reviving the gift sometimes more than the gift itself, it’s the excitement of what is to come. It’s the anticipation until the gift is reviled. Gifts are good, so how is it, based on my opening statement, that we all received a precious gift, yet some of us choose to squander it or even disregard it?

 So what is the gift? What gift where we all given?

Life… The gift of life is our precious gift, the one we choose to celebrate or to negate. The gift of life, the gift of the breath of God:

…from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Gen 2:7)

The breath of life, from God… God giving us our first breath, now that is a precious gift, one that should be celebrated, not squandered! But we humans, with our free will and choose to accept the gift or reject it. What is sad to me, is the fact that we take away the choice for so many of God’s creation, we do not let then decide if they want to celebrate or reject this gift.

Imagine if you can that this coming Christmas laid out before you is a mountain of gifts, each looking more beautiful than the next, and each is for you. Your excitement is bubbling over; you can hardly wait to start ripping them open to see what is inside. But just as you are about to begin the great adventure of discovering all your gifts, someone comes in and removes them, takes them all away and destroys them. Burns then, crushes them, cuts them up and leaves them as a broken pile of waste.

What a shame, what a waste of time and a waste of gifts. I am sure you would feel that they had no right to do this; the gift was yours, no one else’s. How dare they take them away, who gave them the right to do so?

The gift is now useless, a waste and of no use to anyone, especially you. What a shame, and how do you think the person who gave you this gift would feel if they saw what happened to them? They would be hurt, and mad, I am sure. But they keep giving you more gifts, and sometimes all are destroyed and other times only a few are, but always some are wasted. But he keeps giving.

That is what we do with life, we waste some, celebrate others and disregard way too many (one is way to many). We waste them by not living the life God had planned for us, by choosing to follow our own path, and not the one God laid out for us. We celebrate some, by choosing to follow Gods plans, and walking the road He has set before us. And we disregard life by our culture of death, choosing to destroy the gift of life before that life can even see the world created for him/her. We disregard life by choosing to destroy our own life, to take it out of this world, seeing no value in ourselves or in the graces of God. We choose to disregard life by choosing not to participate in it. But choosing to be our own God, our own master, what a shame to waste such a precious gift!

So today do you choose to celebrate the precious gift of life? Do you choose to live it with God in your heart, or do you choose to negate it, and reject the gift of life?

I pray that we all choose to live it! I pray that the culture of death will become the culture of life. I pray that God never gives up hope on his creation, and he continues to breathe the breath of life in to us all.

Paul