We, as Christians, believe that the Lord made the earth and
everything in it, including our bodies. I beg my audience to indulge me
in a bit of science that might seem off topic. (Nothing vulgar or
anything that might be deemed of a sensitive nature, I promise).
As
you are reading this, the chemical blend of the air consisting of
nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor (hydrogen and oxygen), argon, and carbon
dioxide (carbon and oxygen) plus several other trace compounds is
entering your nostrils. There, your body filters it (turns out nose hair
does have a purpose!), warmed, then sent into the eustachian tube, the
trachea, the bronchioles, and finally into the alveoli. In the small
sacs of alveoli, the oxygen required for life is exchanged for the
carbon dioxide the body produces at waste. Then that carbon dioxide
comes back up the bronchioles, the trachea, the eustachian tube, exhaled
through the nostrils. And until you have a bad cold or asthma or
something that prevents you from breathing, most of us repeat this
process on the order of approximately 10,000/day. Assuming you live the
worldwide average of 67.88 years (as of 2013), you will breathe about
250 million times in your life. You do this without thinking about it
while you sleep, while you go about your business, talking to other
people, singing, swimming, praying, loving, hating, and whatever else it
is that you do. And you'll get close to other people and share their
air too.
Now, why am I talking about lungs on a Christian blog?
For the unsaved, their death is upon them from the first moment of sin. But
in Christians, from the day you are saved, a new reaction begins.The
process of death is stopped. We are made a new creation form the first
moment we believe. And yet, we struggle with our sin nature. But God is
working, often silently, humbly, diligently to replace the carnal self
with a new creation that is like Him. And we don't pay any attention to
it, because we're looking for the burning bush or the pillar of fire
come down to us.
Of course, you cannot, without
external aid, cause yourself to stop breathing, for at the moment you
lose consciousness, your brain will begin the process again. It is not
so willing to give up on life. If you focus on your breath while
meditating, you can slow it down. If you exercise, your breath
increases.
Just the same way, once a true believer, you
cannot stop the work of God. He loves you too much to let that happen
and you carry a part of Him with you wherever you go and whatever you
do. Which is not to say you cannot choose to slow down the work of God
in you, by focusing on other things and choosing to live your life
outside of His will. And if you choose to exercise your faith, you can
get stronger faster. You can also choose to share the benefit of what
God is doing in you with others.
This blog is about
holy reactions, the changes in a life marked for God. It's much deeper
than the chemical level. For God, ruler over life, has been knwon to
raise up dead men to life again.
