Bigger Lungs Are Called For. (Inspiration.)

I’ve been thinking about my last blog, and I’ve decided that it wasn’t finished. Because it’s not as simple I don’t think of just deciding to be more disciplined, of just taking a deep breath and re-inflating the bouncy castle of life. I don’t think that my lungs are really big enough for that task. So this blog is about inspiration – which literally means ‘in breathing’. I’ve always liked that. I want to be in-spired in the most literal sense by the massive lungs of God.

I’ve recently developed quite an affection for the poetry of Genesis when it says that God “formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a human being.” I love that it specifies the nostrils. It’s weirdly tactile, isn’t it? Strangely intimate. And its this intimate breathing, this inspiration, that sets the human beings apart from all the other animals and plants, that makes them “in his own image” – the likeness of God comes from the breath of God.

And I think a big part of this ‘life’ that comes in the breath, this ‘likeness’ of God that we have, is creativity. God creates, and then the last things he creates are these people who can themselves create. Because all the very best teachers inspire their students to become like them – the master carpenter inspires her apprentice to carve like she does.

But then later on, after these humans have abandoned God, it’s as if that life-breath gets squashed – dullened. It’s like when we fell from grace we hit the ground hard and we got winded. And to be fair, I think that makes for a reasonable description of ordinary human existence: there’s this marvellous flicker of divine creativity, this spark of genius, of compassion, of courage; but it flickers, and stutters, and gets squashed, and it ends up sort of muted in most people most of the time. It’s there, but it’s shrivelled.

There’s a crazy vision in Ezekiel of this field of dry bones, like a sort of beautiful precursor to the horror-movie genre: God picks up these dry bones, wraps them in flesh, and breathes life back into them. And he tells Ezekiel that’s what he’s going to do for us.

And then that gets fulfilled, as does pretty much every other promise, when Jesus turns up. And he dies, and then is raised back to life, and then there’s this weird scene where he breathes on the disciples. He tells them to receive his breath. (It’s the same word for ‘spirit’, same word for ‘wind’.) And that’s quite an odd thing to do obviously, just walk up to your mates and breathe on them. But what he’s saying is,

‘This is just like the first time. Just like when I breathed into your nostrils and gave you life in the first place. Because you keep dying on me – keep getting winded – and I’m not having it. I want you to have life. I want to inspire you to be what you were always made to be: to be like me.”

Now, I’ve always imagined that moment somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious as a bit like Jesus sprinkling fairy dust on them – all very exciting and magical and tingly. But I’m starting to think it’s more like he’s giving them CPR. It’s not that glamorous a thought really – and it involves admitting that we’re dying – but I think that’s more what he’s offering. Mouth to mouth resuscitation from the living God. And he does offer it to all of us – anyone who is willing to admit that they’re dying and to breathe in when he breathes out. Not just a one off either – every day. A couple of my closest friends have had times recently where they genuinely needed CPR from God just to get out of bed every morning. But he does it – just like he did in the beginning – he bends over, he comes close, and he breathes life into us.

Now I almost feel like I need another blog entirely to talk about how it is that God practically inspires us, and makes it more possible for us to live an impossibly creative life – how he breathes freedom into us – but I’ll mention one thing for now. Fear.

I think that one of the biggest things that holds me back – although I don’t often admit it – is fear. Because creativity – adventure – freedom – these things all involve risk, and risk is scary.

I climbed a tree with my mate Joe the other day. It’s lowest branch was just low enough that he could reach it if he jumped – but he’s about a foot taller than me so once he’d got up he sat on the branch and I grabbed his feet and climbed up that way. It was pretty high, and my heart was beating pretty hard (I imagine he was considerably more chilled about the whole thing, he’s cool like that) but I thought that having just written a blog about the discipline of freedom and adventure I really ought to be brave. And I trust Joe a lot. It was a really good adventure – and inevitably that involved risk. An easy tree would have been boring.

Much more than that though, fear holds us back from stepping out and trying things that we think we might be made to do because we’re worried about what people think of us. We get paralysed by shame, sometimes before we’ve even tried. But Jesus wants to inspire us. He wants to adopt us, and inspire us, so that we can hear him say, ‘Why would you be afraid of what people think of you?! I’m the king of the flipping universe. And I flipping love you. You’re my kid. You could fall off and hurt yourself and look stupid a thousand, thousand times and I would still be dead proud of you.’ There’s a bit in a psalm where it says, “Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” Jesus says, ‘Look at me.’ And his smile is so bright that it actually shines off us. He says, ‘Look at me, and your face will never be covered with shame.’

There’s the more practical kinds of fear as well – I mean the tree was a small example, but I remember when I did the bungee jump off Victoria Falls. Honestly, everyone was so scared doing those jumps – it’s the most I’ve ever been asked to pray with people in my whole life! But stupid as it sounds I genuinely remember standing on the edge of the bridge thinking, ‘I’ve got nothing to fear. “To live is Christ, and to die is gain.” This cord will almost certainly not snap; but if it does, while my mum would be very sad indeed, I would be fine. Jesus, I trust you either way.’ I know that sounds pretentious – but I hope that if I find myself in much more serious situations I will take a deep breath in as God breathes out, and I’ll have the courage that comes from knowing that he’s bigger even than death.

Maybe the biggest one though – in our largely safe, cushty kind of lives – the biggest thing we’re afraid of is love. Because when you really love someone it makes you terribly vulnerable. It takes true courage to invest in another person so much, to care about them so deeply, that you give them the power to devastate you. But there’s really no way around it; there is no way to love without creating the possibility of pain. But the breath of God whispers in our ear and says, ‘Go on, I’ve got you. I can heal broken hearts. Don’t be afraid. I can comfort, and strengthen, and fulfil. Don’t be afraid. If everyone on earth walked out on you, I could still fulfil every one of your needs. Don’t be afraid.’

And maybe there’s one last fear that goes with that one: the fear of ourselves. The fear that realises that when we takes risks of love, of adventure, of freedom with other people, we are asking them to trust us with their hearts and their lives too. So what happens if we don’t trust ourselves? If we don’t think that we’re worthy to love, that we’re not safe hands to place a heart in? We pull back and shrivel up and we are not free. But God breathes deeply, and reminds us that his breath carries his likeness. That we were made to be like him, and when we breathe him in we can actually be made like him. We can breathe out our selfishness, our cruelty, our apathy; and breathe in his patience, his kindness, his goodness, his gentleness, his peace, his joy, his love, his self-control, his faithfulness. We can breathe him in until we’re like him. And with every breath we are less of a liability. Less of a danger to ourselves and the people who love us. He wants to inspire us until we are not afraid of anything, not even ourselves.

Basically, I reckon that my “I’ll do my best and see how it goes” attitude might get me to a few half decent balloons. But if my life is going to be a bouncy castle – or one of those big inflatable assault courses – maybe even a huge 50ft bouncy slide… well, I’m going to need some help from a bigger pair of lungs. I’m going to need some inspiration.