envelop spinner search close plus arrow-right arrow-left facebook twitter

Just Breathe

Just Breathe

by Rev. Alexandra Robinson on May 04, 2022


“The Lord God formed the human[a] from the topsoil of the fertile land[b] and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life.” Genesis 2:7 (CEB version)

 

In weeks like this one, the tweets, posts, chatter and reports of everything going on in the world is overwhelming.  Whether your concern lies in mental health, physical health or the health of the church, there is plenty to share your opinions and talk about.  Our air space is crowded.  I appreciate and respect healthy debate and constructive conversation, but most of what I hear seems to demonize differences of opinion to dehumanize one another.  So what I have focused on is breathing.  And not just in a survival mentality, but for spiritual well-being. 

Each morning for several months now, I have developed a simple routine. In my morning prayers, I take three deep breaths and connect those breaths with the Trinity. 

I breathe in the creativity of God, and breathe out God’s creativity into the world.

I breathe in the compassion of Jesus, and breathe out Jesus’ compassion into the world.

I breathe in the connection to the Holy Spirit, and breathe out the Spirit’s connection into the world.

On weeks like this, I find myself doing several cycles of this Trinitarian formula– 6, 9 and even 12 breaths in my morning prayers.

This centers me for the day, but also assures me of the power of breath.  Breath is life given from God.  In the second creation story in the book of Genesis, we are told that God breathed into humanity.  Breath is not something humanity can create, for it is the spark that gives us life.  Though life forms may not have always breathed oxygen, it is the assurance of even scientists that breathing some in some form is essential to life.  That breath is our commonality in all of humanity.  Breath offers us the single unifying factor which none of us can live without. 

Yet breath is also the cycle of life connecting us – as the oxygen/carbon dioxide we breathe in and out is shared.  Research by theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss shows that molecules we breathe each day are evenly distributed throughout the environment.  Each 24 hours, you take in about 20,000 breaths, or about 7.3 million breaths a year. This means there is a mathematical probability that more than 99 out of 100 of our breaths will contain molecules from people anywhere in the world from any time period. 

As humans, we breathe and rebreathe the same air as it circulates around the globe.

 Over the course of our lives -we have shared air space with all of humanity!  And in that shared air space, perhaps we can realize our life force as connected, despite our differences.  Can that basic commonality be enough?  It must be.

If breath is the spark that gives us life,  breath can also be the spark that gives life to one another.  I believe that despite the many places in which we focus on our differences, we can find in our breath together a shared air space to bind and unite us as common humanity. So when you are feeling discouraged, disheartened or disconnected – just breathe.

Tags: trinity, breathe, genesis 2:7, overwhelm, just breathe

About the Author
Rev. Alexandra Robinson

Hi!  My name is Alexandra, but most people at the church call me Pastor Alex.  Since I’m the senior pastor here, and the person who you will hear preaching most Sundays, I thought you might like to have a less formal biography, and learn a little about why I preach what I do!

I was born in London England because my mother was British, so I spent a lot of my summers overseas. This gave me an appreciation for different life experiences and cultures from a young age.  I primarily grew up in Houston, Texas, and one of my first memories of the states was being ridiculed for my British accent by a boy at the kindergarten bus stop.  Not only did I change my accent to fit in with the other kids, but I’ve kept a lifelong desire to ensure others don’t feel like an outcast.  When I was in 5th grade I attended a small school and found out I was the only student who did not have a church home. So I promptly went home and told my parents we needed to start going to church.  Fortunately, the closest church to our house was United Methodist, and when I sat in the pew, I looked up at the 80 year old man preaching from the pulpit and thought “I want to do that someday.”  To say the least, it didn’t make much sense.  I didn’t know much about church and I’d certainly never met a female preacher.  So although I became an active church member, I pushed the idea of being a preacher far back in my mind. 

When I went to college at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, I changed my major five times and still graduated in four years (thank goodness it was a liberal arts school!). Ironically in all of those majors, none of them was religion.  I graduated having learned the power of deep friendships and a lot about psychology.  Even as I began working as a child life specialist in a children’s hospital, that little nagging voice of preaching kept creeping up to the front of my mind.   If there is one thing I know about God’s character, it is that God has a sense of humor and is persistent.

Finally, I met a female preacher and she encouraged me to attend seminary, which I thought was a calling to do one of three things I was passionate about:  either be an advocate for children’s peace and justice ministries,  a missionary in Africa, or a children’s minister.  Yet, by the invitation of another female pastor, I worked in the local church and found my gifts and talents were better suited there.  This just goes to show the importance of people encouraging you to see what you can’t see in yourself. 

In addition, I met my husband, David Robinson, at that local church, Greenland Hills United Methodist.  He asked me out before a potluck lunch in the fellowship hall one day, and I wrote my phone number down for him on a lottery ticket. Now we have a house, three kids and two cats. You can ask him if he hit the jackpot and I’m sure he will have something funny to say about that.  He’s taught me the value of a good sense of humor.

We’ve raised our family together through 5 different churches, who have loved our kids and helped us to be parents when we didn’t know how.  Each church has taught us something new about God and ourselves, and has pushed us to limits we didn’t think our faith could go. We know the stresses of being working parents, and juggling all the things.  As my husband is an architect and I work full time too, it has not always been easy to raise a family as “pastor’s kids.”  But through these United Methodist churches, we’ve been given friendships that have become like family, been able to teach our children the power of sacrificial servant leadership, and experienced generosity beyond expectation.  My children’s life experiences have ranged from visiting with the homeless to meeting millionaires.  This year, as my twin boys head off to college and my daughter starts high school, I can’t imagine better people they could have encountered in these formative years. 

If you are wondering about who I am, I hope this has given you a little bit of a glimpse, and we will meet in person soon. Finding a church home that is the right match is an important decision, and I want to support you in navigating that path.  Check out our services online, peruse our website, read one of my weekly devotionals, and feel free to reach out for a coffee or visit over the phone.  It would be an honor to be invited into your life and walk this faith journey with you.

More from Devotionals

return to Devotionals