Collective, Continuous Breathing

Gracious God, in this silence I hear the collective, continuous breathing of your church. You are Breath itself.  Your Spirit breathes through us.  It is that very breath that brings us life individually and collectively as a congregation, as a church.

You are Being itself.  You are I AM.  That knowledge, imparted to us through your Son, brings us here today in an hour of worship.

But we are prone to forget.  With our willfulness, we decide to hold our breath, even though we know deep down that breath is life.  Sometimes, God, I get the feeling that the whole world is holding its breath.  We seem to be a pessimistic people living in pessimistic times.  We seem to expect the worst and are surprised by the best, instead of the other way around.

Lord, help us not to sigh . . .sigh in resignation and disappointment or pessimism.  That's breathing OUT.  That's the breath of death.

Lord, we need to breathe IN again.  We want to live.  We want to breathe deeply.  We need your Spirit breathing, filling our lungs . . .filling our beings so that it will be obvious to the rest of our world that we are alive.  We are in the world of the living.

So, let us rejoice in this hour, rejoice in the immanence of the Living God, rejoice in the transcendence of the Son, and rejoice in the pervasive presence of the Spirit.  Again, I say, REJOICE.  Amen.

Prayer by Jim McNabb, Sunday, September 25, 2011.  More about worship at FBC,