When our daughter was in kindergarten, she brought home a
painting she’d done one day and proudly showed it off. A bright red flower garden with a single rose
towering over all the rest, and next to that she’d printed: “I Live God.”
“Look,” she said, “It says, ’I love God!’”
It was only an accidental misspelling, but we’ve always
felt there was something profound about that mistaken letter “i,” and to this
day it hangs on our wall as a reminder that loving God is, in fact, the essence
of life.
Our daughter wasn’t intentionally
doing theology that day, of course, but her painting is a helpful “way-in” for thinking
about the unique work of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.
One of the ancient creeds calls the Holy Spirit, “The
Lord and giver of life”; but the very same creed says that Jesus is Lord, and that the Father
is the Maker of Heaven and Earth, so in what way should we understand the Holy Spirit as both the Lord and the Giver
of life?
Well: just like my daughter’s painting created an
interesting (though unintentional) play on words, there is a fascinating
play-on-words in the Bible that helps us get to the heart of what’s going on
here.
Because in the original languages of the Bible, the word
for “Spirit” is the same as the word for “wind,” and the word for
“breath.” In Hebrew the words are either
ruach or neshawmaw', and they can mean spirit, or wind, or breath, depending on the context.
Like in the Creation story. It says that in the
beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and then it says that, before
anything came into existence, God’s Spirit—his ruach—was hovering over the water. And so the creation began.
Later on in the Noah’s Ark story, after water has swept
away all life from the earth and God wants to re-create everything, fresh and
new, it says, he sent a wind—his ruach—over the water.
The point is, whenever God Creates, he does it by sending
his ruach—his Spirit.
But there are even deeper layers here. Because in the same creation story, it
explains how God created the first human, and it says that God breathed into
him the breath of life—his neshawmaw’—and
he became a living being.
Humans, of course, need to breathe-- without neshawmaw’,
we’d die—but it’s not just our breathing
that keeps us alive. It’s actually the
very breath
of God, his divine Spirit.
Like it says in the Book of Job: as long as breath—my neshawmaw’—is in me,
the Ruach of God—his Spirit—is in my nostrils. And:
“The Spirit of God (his ruach) has made me, and the breath of the
Almighty (his neshawmaw’) has given me life.
And not just humans; in one place it’s talking about all the living things in creation, and
it says, “When God takes away their breath—their
ruach—they die; but when he sends his Spirit, they spring to life.”
It turns out our daughter was painting truer than she
knew, because anything that’s alive
and breathing, if it is alive and breathing, it’s only because the Spirit breathed
life into it.
In that one
sense, we all sort of “live God,” with every breath we take.
Of course, there’s breathing and then there’s being
alive; and there’s more to being alive than simply taking breaths.
So maybe that’s why Jesus, much later, explained that it
wasn’t enough for us to be alive just
in the “physical breath” sense of the word; we needed to be brought to life spiritually,
too; we have to be born of the Spirit, is how he said it.
And he was talking about the way the Holy Spirit brings
us alive to the love of God, and opens our spirits to the Story of Jesus, and
brings us into a life-giving relationship with him.
Because when God breathes into us like that, that’s when we discover he’s the
Lord and Giver of Life, in every sense of
the word.
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