BenjaminLee's blog

Something resonates deep within my soul every time a crack open the majestic book by J.R.R. Tolkien. It calls to me like the mysterious music of the Ainur that still lingers on the waves of the sea. I feel that it summons me to a higher life - a life of quality, excellence and grandeur, where friends share lives using the High Speech of Tolkien, or sacred scriptures, and within every twig or fallen leaf is the pulsing power of the Holy Spirit that transfigures dross and quickens the dead.

It’s about at this time of year when we become disgusted with ourselves for not being able to maintain our New Years Resolution… again. It is so frustrating to continually go through the cycle of failure, hitting rock bottom, wallowing in it for a while, wondering if there is any hope for us to be something other than we are. We then get the courage to get back up and try to overcome ourselves, usually around New Years, only to slowly slide back down the slimy slope into the slop of our miserable lives. Well…that might be a bit of an exaggeration.

Prayer begins with the inhale.  Before we are able to utter anything with our lips we must first draw through them the air that fills us, enabling not only our speech but also our life.  And we must remember that humanity did not take the first breath but that it was given to us.  God’s exhale became humanity’s first inhale, filling us not only with life, but the ability to participate in the creative power of breathing.  For it was God’s breath that uttered the world into existence, and God’s breath that filled humanity with life.

And so before we gather words to give to our God, we must first realize that this activity of prayer is itself a gift from God.  It is the very breath that God breathed into humanity that we in turn direct back to God.  Taking in and breathing out this breath of God is no trifling matter. “This is not an enterprise to be entered into lightly,” Eugene Peterson notes. “When we pray we are using words that bring us into proximity with words that break cedars, shake the wilderness, make the oaks whirl, and strip forests bare (Ps. 29:5-9).”