S108P7 – Creation story: first breath

Gen. 2:7

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

Dr. Frankenstein was almost there, but he was missing that last step.  He had harvested the different body parts and organs needed to create his monster.  He meticulously assembled the pieces to form his own twisted version of man.  Once the construction was complete, one final task remained.  He had to find a way to give life to this being.  A body was there, but it was not yet a person.  It was still a corpse and quite a mess of one.  In this fantasy of fiction, the good doctor found life in electricity sourced from a bolt of lightning.  In reality, that would not do the trick.  Nothing short of the breath of God could bring a man to life. 

I have a keychain that I was given by the American Red Cross which contains a CPR shield.  Our class received these after first aid training for our protection in the event we would need to resuscitate someone.  You see, breathing air into a lifeless body requires very close contact. It cannot be done from across the room or a foot away.  The shield prevents contamination to either party as resuscitation must be done face-to-face.  Although we only breathed into dummies during our class, it made me wonder what it would be like to give someone breath again.  It also made me wonder what it was like for Adam to receive his first breath directly from God.  That would have been a moment of closeness between God and man which was not duplicated in any other area of creation.

The breath of life, the direct breath from God, was reserved for the one who would be made in his likeness.  Mankind originated when the Lord created us from dust and then took that form and injected it with life from himself.  He could have taken air from the sky and filled Adam’s lungs with that, but He did not.  He instead chose this close contact as his way of making man come alive.  It is a testament to his love for us that we come from a place of holy intimacy that is beyond our imagination and our merit.  Father, remind us of the way You brought life to mankind, and give us a desire to chase that kind of closeness with You today.