There is not one second in all of our existence where we’re doing this on our own.
I love discovering connections in the story…
Here’s what popped out to me this morning in the story. This riveting moment at the birth of life when God himself breathes life into a newly shaped being, so that it became a living being, ready to flourish in a world that God had created in which to enjoy his living.
Then the Yahweh Elohim formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
The Yahweh Elohim planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he placed the man he had formed. Yahweh Elohim caused to grow out of the ground every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:7-9, CSB)
When I saw that, a connection immediately emerged in my mind. It’s this moment when Paul is making an argument to the culture he’s immersed in about the God he believes in. Take a look with me:
The God who made the world and everything in it — he is the ruler of heaven and earth — does not live in shrines made by hands. Neither is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things. From one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. He did this so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’ (Acts 17:24-28, CSB)
There it is. That’s the connection that struck me.
In the very beginning, life for humanity depended on God’s breath, his active involvement supplying and sustaining life. And that has not changed for humanity today. We are still fully and completely dependent on the Ruler of heaven and earth, we still need him to give all of us life and breath, it is still by him that we live and move and have our being, we are still all his offspring, just as Adam was in the garden.
We live dependent.
We live in need.
There is not one second in all of our existence where we’re doing this on our own.
So let’s live humbly and with gratitude today.
