Let Every Breath

I have been thinking a lot about breathing recently. I don’t think I’m alone in this. Especially since COVID19 and the wearing of masks, we are not as quick to take the blessing of breathing for granted, are we?!

The last song in the song book of the Bible is a Hallel song or a “Praise the Lord” song. We get the term hallelujah from this Hebrew word Hallel. As King David compiled the Psalms, it is not without significance that he put the last song of the collection to invite us to use our breath to praise and thank our Lord.

Praise the Lord!

Praise God in His sanctuary,

praise him in his mighty heavens!

Praise him for his mighty deeds,

praise him according to his excellent greatness!

Praise him with trumpet sound,

praise him with lute and harp!

Praise him with tambourine and dance,

praise him with strings and pipe!

Praise him with sounding cymbal,

praise him with loud clashing cymbals!

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord!

I am not a betting man, but I would be willing to wager that you and I cannot remember the last time we praised the Lord for His gift of breath. Though we may know that our breath comes from Him and when it is time for our divine appointment with the Lord, our breath goes back to Him, why is it that we don’t regularly thank Him for it? Can I suggest that one of the reasons is because everyone alive gets it! Things that all of us get often become things we think we are entitled to have—they are our right! And yet, every minute God gives each of us to live, we get at least 12 breaths. From the first minute of life when we get our first breath from Him until our minute of life and our last breath, all of those breaths are a gift from Him.

That’s right! On an average each of us takes 12 to 18 breaths per minute. You can do the math: 12 x 60=720 breaths per hour; 720 x 24=17,280 breaths per day. 17,280 x 365=6,307,200 breath per year. Now take your age and multiply how old you are by 6,307,200. In my lifetime, I have breathed at least 400 million times. Because of how our Creator has beautifully and wisely designed our lungs, each breath gets filtered by small hairs and mucus through our breathing tract and enters our two lungs where anywhere from 300 million to 600 million little round sacks called alveoli (alveolar) extract the oxygen from the breath and oxygenate our blood so that we can function as His imago dei!

I think that helps me understand more deeply why “everything that has breath” should praise the Lord. Hallelujah!

Dr. David Ley is the President of Alaska Bible College and Pastor of Family Care, ChangePoint Mat-Su.