I was struck by some sentences in yesterday's meditation, in the Henri Nouwen Lenten devotional booklet that many of us are using:

"The relationship between Jesus and the Father is so intimate it is like breathing. God offers this same intimacy to you and me, breathing love into us and with this breath inspiring us to breathe love to others. This is intimacy with God.

"...That is why the Holy Spirit is such a gift to you. The Spirit is God's breath, bringing you into intimate communion. God, by the Spirit, dwells in you and makes a home in you."

The image of breath and God's presence in breath takes on profound meaning for someone who has survived a disease of the lungs! During the darkest days of my hospitalization (when I was not aware of what was happening), the ventilator was set at times at 100% oxygen -- a level that was necessary because I was in such critical condition, but a level that cannot be maintained for long without damaging a person's lungs. Think of the skill of those respiratory therapists who were working to keep me alive!

Then came the day when the therapists began working with me to wean me off the ventilator. That was a terrifying experience. My lungs had grown used to the machine breathing for me. When the therapists disconnected the machine, I felt as if I was suffocating. And so, the first couple of days, I begged them to put me back on after only short periods. The turning point for me came as I was describing what I felt to one of my nurses, and she said that's what it was supposed to feel like -- suffocation! "Be strong," she said. "You aren't going to suffocate, even though you feel that way. Your lungs will again become used to breathing on their own."

On Thanksgiving Day, Pastor Cheryl Griffin came in to visit me. I will never ever forget this. One of the things she read to me was Eugene Peterson's version of the 23rd Psalm, including this paraphrase of one of the verses: "You allow me to catch my breath." Electrifying! Only days earlier I had become free of the machine that breathed for me! I was, indeed, able now to catch my own breath!

God is closer to us than our own breath. What intimate presence. Don't take a single breath for granted.