All That Has Breath

 

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”

—Psalm 150:6

As a musician, maybe more than others I can appreciate the absolute essential nature of air under motion. Without that element, no acoustic instrument can make a sound. The scientific and even most elemental study of sound proves that point. A vibration must be set in motion by air in order for a violin string, a clarinet reed, a trombonist’s lip buzz, or a pipe organ’s speech to produce sound.

Singers know they sing on a column of air. They spend long warm-up sessions exercising the diaphragm and lungs to build their capacity for long difficult passages.

In this electronic age when, to an untrained ear, a sound produced that closely resembles the natural thing sounds right, we have come to forget the miracle of natural sound with all its overtones and varying timbres.

Not only does moving air carry instrumental and singing sounds, but it gives us as humans our very life. Genesis 2:7 says:

…the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

And, Acts 17:28 states:

For in him we live and move and have our being.

We owe our earthly lives to our ability to breathe the air God has made for us at just the correct temperature and pressure to keep us healthy. We live by the Breath of God because we are not automatons who merely copy the real thing. We live just as God does because we were formed in His image.

When we arrived from our mothers’ wombs, with a slap on the behind, we were given the gift of breath. As Christians, when we experience the Second Birth, we gain Eternal Life through the breath of the Holy Spirit. In Greek, the term is “pneuma.” That Holy Spirit’s breath now lives in us and carries us along just as the atmosphere supports our natural bodies with air.

At the first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection, a real-life illustration of this came as the disciples waited. In Acts 2:2-4 we read:

Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.

The next time you hear an instrumentalist play or hear a fine singer, let the beauty remind you of the tremendous gift of life that flows through the musician and the instrument and be thankful. Let it also remind you of the natural breath of life you enjoy through the goodness of a wise Creator. Most of all, take a cue from the following song ¹ and pray for the air of the Spirit to fill your life full with the Presence of God:

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
fill me with life anew,
That I may love what Thou dost love,
and do what Thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
until by heart is pure.
Until my will is one with Thine,
to do and to endure.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
till I am wholly Thine,
Until this earthly part of me
glows with Thy fire divine.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
so shall I never die,
But live with Thee the perfect life
of Thine eternity.

______________________

1 Hatch, Edwin. Breathe on Me, Breath of God, (Public Domain).