The Breath of Life

"And with that he breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'" John 20:22

"But what man, in his natural condition, has not got, is Spiritual life--the higher and different sort of life that exists in God. We use the same word life for both: but if you thought that both must therefore be the same sort of thing, that would be thinking that the 'greatness' of space and the 'greatness' of God were the same sort of greatness. In reality, the difference between Biological life and Spiritual life is so important that I am going to give them two distinct names. The Biological sort which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in Nature) is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc., is Bios. The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.

"And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life." Mere Christianity

One of my favorite scenes in the new movie version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is when Aslan breathes on Tumnus the Faun, who has been turned to stone, and slowly the grey contours turn to the color of flesh, and hair, and a red scarf. Then Tumnus, weak at first, as though returning to normal life from a long convalescence, falls into the arms of Lucy and Susan.

I identify with Tumnus. I want to do the right thing but oftentimes find myself doing wrong--as he did in the case of kidnapping Lucy. Often I feel like certain areas of my life are still very stony, dead, waiting for the life-giving breath of Aslan. And so I pray with Edwin Hatch, the hymn-writer:

Breathe on me, Breath of God,

Fill me with life anew,

That I may love what Thou dost love,

And do what Thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,

Until my heart is pure,

Until with Thee I will one will,
To do and to endure.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,

Till I am wholly Thine,

Until this earthly part of me

Glows with Thy fire divine.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,

So shall I never die,

But live with Thee the perfect life

Of Thine eternity.

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Will Vaus

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