Catching our breath

“Let Us make man in Our image…”

It wasn’t the dust or the fingers or kneecaps that reflected the divine image. It was that invisible part. The breath of life. Because we were made for so much more than we can see or smell. We were made for more than flesh.

We were made for the deeper realities. Deeper purposes. When humans walked away from God the deeper things went dormant and the flesh began to rule. The dust was never meant to be our defining characteristic. When we live by what can be tasted and touched alone we settle for a diminished existence. Something less than the real life. The full life.

We miss the ruach. It’s the Hebrew word for wind, spirit, breath.

It’s not that there is a moral divide between the physical and the spiritual. Biblical faith does not get caught up in the gnostic error of condemning all things physical and elevating all things spiritual. Jesus does not call us to simply pursue the invisible and ignore the earthly. We are to be fully human.

Made of dust. But defined by His breath of life.

When they bit the fruit they really did die. They became fractured. Alive, but dead. Human, but less than. Incomplete. Not just them, but us … missing something we can not put our fingers on.

We lost our ruach, and we’ve been trying to catch our breath ever since.

That’s why the problem has never just been the dust we were made from. It’s the dust without the Ruach. That’s the essence of what the Scripture calls “the flesh.”

And that is why the best news we ever received was when God would take on flesh. Because what the first Adam lost, the second Adam has restored. Fully God, fully man. Recapturing the original intent: made of dust, but defined by our breath of life.

And if you’ll look to the One who lost his breath on the tree we call the cross, you’ll catch your breath, and find your life.

 

Related:

Share This:

Thoughts on Catching our breath

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Subscribe Today!

Enter your information to subscribe to the newsletter and to stay updated with what Pastor Mike is doing!