Breathing must not be as easy as everyone supposes. For example, when a young child is crying hysterically, every parent knows to say 'breathe'. When our children were young we urged them to breathe on several occasions. Similarly, I attended a class with my wife so I would be trained to tell her to breathe while she was in labor with our first child. So, breathing must not always come natural.
Last night I woke up suddenly because I could not breathe. I had done some weed-whacking that morning without the benefit of a pollen mask. At 2:00 AM my allergies kicked in and I was stuffed up enough that I could no longer breathe through my nose while sleeping. I've also felt that discomforting situation at the pool when swallowing some water and having circumstances prevent me from immediately being able to cough it up and get air. Both of those scenarios can be unnerving, because we so desperately need to breathe.
No doubt many people with asthma or other life threatening situations that affected their ability to breathe for awhile can feel this even more deeply.
Today in church, our music minister, Robert Comeaux exhorted us to make praising God like breathing. It should be as natural and rhythmic as breathing to praise our Lord and Savior. Yet, it is often more like those times of struggle when we are holding our breath or gasping for air. Rather than simply praising God, letting His graces flow in as easily a drawing a deep breath, and letting the praises flow out as simply as exhaling, I am often asthmatic in my adoration of my Father.
When healthy, we need no training or process guide to breathing; we only need to breathe. Neither are degrees or professional standards of excellence required, we only need to breathe. In Exhale, Plumb focuses on the grace and goodness from God only needs to be breathed in, and then in turn, we exhale and breathe out that grace on others, and let that breath also bring praise to God.
Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord. Psalm 150:6 (KJV)
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