A horde of giddy teen-age girls invaded Sears one afternoon while I was trying on Armani’s latest scents! The saleslady said, “Ugh! So noisy! Boys! Boys! Boys! That’s all they think and talk about! But such are teenage girls, so full of life! I miss my teenage years. I used to be so inspired, eh!” I wondered what she meant by inspired. She probably meant “driven.” Driven to look great, to sound nice, to be better- mostly to be more attractive to the opposite sex. Such is teenage life!
Back in high school my guidance counselor said, “Take your crushes and infatuations (from another interesting Latin word) and make them your inspiration to be better. You see the better you become the more likeable you are!” It’s interesting how that little statement made a socially-skilled “studyphile” out of me, and eventually ending up dating her niece in college (and that’s another story)!
At one Bible study meeting sometime ago, I asked the group, “What is the root word of ‘inspiration’?” Everyone answered, “Inspire!” They answered right but it was not entirely accurate. Inspiration, respiration, conspire all come from one Latin word, spiritus, “breath.” To conspire means to “breathe with,” to be inspired is to be “breathed into,” and respire is to “breathe again.”
At the very heart of inspiration is the word, Spirit, which in the Christian tradition and theology, is a person in the Trinity of God. The Hebrew word for spirit is “ruach” the pronunciation of which conveys breath or breathing. The Greek word for for spirit is “pneuma” from which we get the word pneumonia, the respiratory condition. To be in-spirited means to be breathed into by God Himself.
Back in the town where my dad pastored a church for a long time, the most popular jogging and biking area was a cemetery! Well maintained grass, tree-lined asphalt roads and paths, cool breeze coming down from Rizal’s eastern hills, it was a great place to jog in the morning or late afternoon. That’s where my mom’s body lies. I jogged there a lot, and it sometimes gave me the creeps to think that I was actually surrounded by dead people! But it never failed to remind me of the story in Scripture which I read again this morning (Ezekiel 37:1-14). A prophet was taken by the Spirit of God to a valley of dry bones, a cemetery if you will, and was asked, “Can these bones live?” The Spirit breathed life over them. The bones rattled and started to come together. Tendons and flesh started to appear. Out of an entire valley of dry bones came human beings. Finally, the Spirit breathed into them and they lived.
Sometimes, we find ourselves feeling “uninspired.” Times come when things we do, jobs we hold, the relationships we treasure, and even the “religion” we uphold all seem to have become rote and lifeless. People grow tired and weak. That’s when we are encouraged to seek revival to be “inspirited” again. We are called to speak Life to our dead and dying situations with authority from the Life-giver Himself, Jesus Christ.
So breathe deeply. It is God’s pleasure to fill you with his very breath. And as we consider our individual situations, the situation of this highly troubled world and the problems of this fragmented humanity, it is important that we seek to be “inspired” by the God who wants to remake the human spirit. Having considered our situation in the bright light of day, let us claim the promise- the promise of life; the glorious impossible- to bring to life that which has fallen.
