The Breath Of Life

Had an interesting conversation with a friend this week.

We were talking about how ego will drive some people to do anything to hang on to their attitudes, beliefs and habits, even when these prove self-destructive or harmful to loved ones.

My friend volunteers with the Women's Prison Fellowship back home. She shared about the time she challenged the inmates on how they were wasting their time in immoral activities， 只 为了 争一口气 (to fight for a breath, meaning to win at all costs for the sake of pride and to prove a personal point).

After all, she reasoned, our lives are not ours. We are alive because God made us alive. He breathed the breath of life into Adam and Eve, and they came alive. Ditto for us. Conversely, we are all one breath away from dying. All God needs to do is to take away our ability to breathe, and that's the end of us. If our lives are on loan from God, why spend our energies fighting to prove that we are right and that things must go our way?

All flesh is like grass, and all the glory of man is as the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower fades away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.