Listen to this week’s Devotional here.
Author: Karen Hoover
Note: This mediation was first published in June 2020 when I was thinking about breath while wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic and following the murder of George Floyd. Now, I have returned to it during the last few weeks of breath-taking Supreme Court decisions and frightening revelations regarding the 2020 Insurrection. With my anger and fear rising, my thoughts again returned to one of my favorite hymns, “Breathe on Me, Breath of God.” Perhaps these reflections will be helpful anew to you, also.
Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Fill me with life anew
That I may love the way you love,
And do what you would do.
Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until with you I will one will,
To do and to endure.
We read in Genesis that it is God who formed humankind “and breathed into nostrils the breath of life” to create “a living being.” But it was Jesus who taught us how to be fully human: to love one another, to do unto others as we would have done to us, to turn the other cheek, to cross the road to help, give up our cloak, go the extra mile, and care for the widow, to require justice, abandon fear, and to step out on faith.
Now, dear friends, is still the time for us to breathe in God’s love and to breathe out Jesus’s justice. From our comfortable vantage point, we abhor systemic racism and racist acts which continue seemingly unabated, including police shootings of unarmed Black men at traffic stops. We are outraged by the horrifying number of needless violent deaths caused by the sanctioned proliferation of guns, and especially semi-automatic weapons, in our society, too often in the hands of angry men who care nothing for another’s breath of life. Yet the mounting toll numbs us. We know that each forced birth becomes a breathing child also requiring protection and nurture. Yet this support for families is never a priority and more are falling into poverty, while maternal mortality rates also rise. We know that without clean air, our own breathing is impaired, and that asthma rates are higher among children of color living in neighborhoods degraded by nearby fossil fuel production. Indeed, when we complete our seemingly unfettered destruction of our planet, nothing created by God will be breathing.
But, despite our feeling that we are gasping for breath, we must use that breath to animate our action for justice. NOW is still the time to work with all allies. Only then can we together build the “beloved community” of peace and justice. I recently read that we take 25,000 breaths per day. IF we’re able to sleep 8 hours, that still leaves over 16,000 breaths to put love to work creating justice. Without justice there can be no peace. We can’t give up. We cannot abandon our work and responsibility. In the words of the hymn, “to do and to endure.”
God who breathed into us: Help us to take the deep breaths we need to calm and re-energize ourselves in these deeply unsettling times. Refresh the activists among us and extend to them your protection. Thank you for creating aspen leaves to dance on the slightest breath of breeze and delight our eye. May they be living reminders that we have been animated by your breath to be justice-makers. And may our movement toward justice be pleasing to you. Amen
