"This is what the LORD says: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be?" - ISAIAH 66:1

     It's remarkable how quickly one is prone to forget that our very first breath EVER, was actually the breath of "God Himself", a breath He first inhaled, and then transferred, with every ounce of a Father's undiluted love, into our very own nostrils. The magnitude of this event, and the significance of it, is truly staggering. It was none other than the sovereign God, the very Creator of the entire universe, who personally bent down from His glorious abode on high, and ensured that the very first inhalation we ever took, came from His very own lungs, being a soft exhalation, delivered as an invisible and unmistakable kiss, from the lips of our heavenly Father Himself. And for this reason too, it's true when it says that we love Him simply because He loved us first. What needs to be added to this too, though, is that we all kneel before Him now, because at the beginning, when He first breathed into our nostrils, it was He who first knelt before us.

     In that single, tender gesture, God commenced and has begun the lifelong fulfilment of His eternal promise of love and fatherhood. In that moment of unadulterated affection, He set an exquisite exclamation point on honouring His covenant pledge of "I will never leave you nor forsake you". He began the process of bestowing His profoundly personal ode and pledge of our eternal togetherness. What sweet and sublime intimacy. What heavenly bliss and tender thoughtfulness. What exquisite care. What astonishing privilege. What Fatherly love. What delightful oneness. The very same breath that travelled the length and breadth and contours of His own chest, and passed through the chambers of His own heart, by great privilege alone, then also occupied ours. That very same breath FILLED our own nostrils with the unique taste and life and sound of His own lungs and His beating heart. If only every breath thereafter too came from the very same fountain of life, from the very same place of intoxicating intimacy, what an exquisitely full life we would all lead! What overwhelming oneness would that truly be! "As the deer panteth for water, so my soul longeth for Thee" (Psalm 42:1).

     As we cast our eye back to that birthing moment, in an astonishing demonstration of cosmic CPR, our LORD knelt down before us and administered a life-altering touch from His very own mouth that still sustains our lives to this day. Up until that very instant when His breath first entered our nostrils, it was as mere star dust prostrate upon His footstool, that we yet subsisted. "The Spirit of God has made me, And the breath of the Almighty gives me life." (Job 33:4). He swept up the dust and breathed into its nostrils, and man became a living soul. "In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind." (Job 12:10). From lying forever prostrate before Him, an appropriate precursor of things to come for those who love the Lord, He stood up this dust and gave it a name. And to this day, it remains truly His breath that sustains all of mankind. In fact, it is by the sovereign unction of His breath alone that anything in creation prevails at all. "By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host." (Psalm 33:6). And that we may look on anything with wonder and awe, it is all due to the egress of His nostrils. "By His breath the heavens gained their beauty" (Job 26:13).

     Such is the authority of God's breath, that without so much as lifting even a single finger, that our Father also stands up all our victories, and raises to their feet all of our miracles too. "By the breath of your nostrils the waters were piled up, the flowing waters stood up like a hill, the deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea." (Exodus 15:8). From the effortless egress of His nostrils, He accomplishes the simply astonishing. If it be a mere trifle for man to exhale, of what manner of labour could it possibly be for God Himself to do so too? Yet, if such is the authority and might of His mere breath, long may I remain carried by the winds of His lungs. And "All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils" (Job 27:3) may I daily mount up on the wings of eagles upon the trade winds of heaven.

    "This is what the LORD says: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be?" (Isaiah 66:1). May Your breath forever rest upon me. For then I will build a house for You buoyed by the thermals of Your wisdom and supply. And "All my bones will say, "LORD, who is like You" (Psalm 35:10). When this dust returns one day to dust, from the dust of those same bones, may You again stand up sinew and tendon, and once more cover me with Your new wine skin, putting Your breath in me, so that all will know that You are the LORD. "Again He said to me, "Prophesy over these bones and say to them, 'O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.' "Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones, 'Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life. 'I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive; and you will know that I am the LORD.'" (Ezekiel 37:4-14).

     As the profoundness of God's first breath settles in to hold us in awe, at no other time does the saying of "absence makes the heart grow fonder" ring more true than now. For those who have not forgotten the origins and significance of that first breath, we have something even better to look forward to. For just as our very first breath ever was of God, so too will our very first breath on the other side of the curtain of eternity also be of God. But instead of it being the delightful and precious "taste" of God, the momentous next "very first breath of God" will be in the order of magnitude of multiples much more sublime. It will be milk and honey. It will be the very "fullness" of God. For it is said that "For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality." (1 Corinthians 15:53). And the very thing that will of itself, and by its authority alone, usher in and stand up this imperishable, it will be that very first full breath of God yet again.

- To God be all the glory. Forever and ever. Amen and amen.

- Blessings, Wayne Biehn