looking through me

Tag: hope

May 29, 2015

breath

I think about breath a lot. I watch the shallow rise and fall of my grandma’s chest as she sleeps. I adjust her oxygen and murmur prayers of gratitude that this round of pneumonia is free of the agonizing cough and battle for breath previous bouts have brought. I listen to my nephew’s easy breathing; I do not take it for granted after hearing the gasping wheeze that accompanied many respiratory struggles in his young life.

The power of breath stuns me.

God breathed life into a man.[1] Jesus breathed the Spirit onto the disciples.[2] And someday Jesus will return, and He will breathe out again and it will kill the lawless one.[3]

The same breath—radically different results. Evil cannot tolerate the goodness of God. One exhalation of the Spirit will slay it. It won’t be the force or velocity of the breath. God didn’t hold back as He breathed into Adam. Jesus didn’t sigh out the Spirit on His disciples. And He won’t huff with gale force breath on the Antichrist. The same measure of breath gives life and takes it away. Purity blows away impurity.

And in some wild mystery the same enlivening Spirit that will conquer evil with a breath resides in me.

I breathe in and breathe out.

 

[1] Genesis 2:7

[2] John 20:22

[3] 2 Thessalonians 2:8

 

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May 8, 2015

nonnative species

Three coyotes crossed the road—at a full sprint down the railroad tracks, through the industrial park, at 7:20 a.m. Right in front of my car.

They looked healthy. Full coats. Loping gait. Tongues lolling. Another coyote or two appeared to be running ahead of them. A pack of coyotes deep in suburban sprawl? Were they out of place or was I?

It’s a dissonance I feel more and more often:

. . . A hummingbird resting on a chain-link fence. The diamond opening looming large around the tiny body.

. . . A mockingbird singing a spot-on version of a car alarm before transitioning into the warning beep of a truck in reverse.

. . . A Gerbera daisy sticking its solitary red head out of the drought-hardened ground—not a leaf around it—unconcerned with the critical photosynthetic property of leaves.

. . . An amaryllis trumpeting its arrival to the neighborhood.

. . . Six parrots flying overhead in bright green, squawking pairs.

Nature surviving in the middle of cookie-cutter city startles me. I assume the flora and fauna is out of place, but maybe it’s me.

Like the red-crowned parrots I’ve adapted well to an environment I was never meant to live in permanently, but no amount of time and familiarity will make me a native. I am a temporary resident.

The only home I’ve ever known will not be my forever home. A day is coming when fences and freeways and power poles and police sirens will be no more. The lion and the lamb will rest together; the coyote will cross the street . . . and neither occurrence will be out of place.

 

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