Take a moment with us to just notice your breath. Inhale deeply, exhale with a sigh. How do you feel?
The same breath that fills our lungs is the same breath that moves through all of creation. All of us are breathing finite portions of the Eternal’s Infinite Breath.
Just as the trees breathe, and the winds blow, we find ourselves living, breathing, and moving alongside them. We are never separate from creation; we are always an integral part.
We’ve often been taught to think of ourselves as separate from creation, and even separate from God. We’d like to challenge that belief today with a simple question: What if we are not, and have never been outside of the wholeness The Eternal created, but rather living within it?
What we believe about God shapes what we believe about life, and about ourselves.
Exodus 20:7 states, “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain…” The word for “name” in Hebrew is shem, which refers to the character or essence of something. Here, the Eternal is telling us not to present His character in a false way; to not to lie about who He is.
The worst lie we can tell is a lie about God.
When we begin to believe lies about God, it changes our worldview. The lies we believe distort our perception of everything: life, ourselves, and others. What makes this so difficult is the fact that the most convincing lies often contain a kernel of truth.
In Traveling Light, Eugene Peterson describes a heretic as: “a person who chooses a single item out of the entire body of truth… and makes that the only truth.” Partial truths can distort our understanding of God. If God is only seen as vengeful, we live in fear. If God is only distant, we feel alone and disconnected. Heretics use these partial truths to abuse, coerce, and manipulate us for their own benefit. These distortions shape how we see ourselves and the world, robbing us of the truth and freedom the Eternal so lovingly gives us. Instead, we begin to live as if we are separate, unsafe, or disconnected.
If we look at creation, we see that nothing in nature lives in fear of being what it was created to be. The trees are not afraid of growing. The ocean is not afraid of the tides’ ebb and flow. The moon is not afraid of passing through it’s phases.
Everything belongs. What if we do too?
If we form our beliefs about God from what has been revealed through scripture and through creation,
we begin to see a fuller picture. Romans 1:20 says that God’s nature has been clearly seen through what has been made. Acts 17 tells us: “In Him we live and move and have our being…”
When we begin to see God through creation, something shifts and we enter into the full human experience. We stop trying to find God outside of life, and begin to recognize that we are living within it. We are not here to observe creation; we live as participants within it. We live, move, and have our being as part of creation, not beside, beyond, or outside of it.
Seeing ourselves this way, as an integral part of all creation changes our perception and our experience. We learn that we don’t have to reach for wholeness; we simply need to remember it. It’s something we’re already and have always been held in.
The Eternal is the creator of everything and is everywhere.
Each of us individually cannot fully comprehend the Eternal, but we do get glimpses of it within ourselves, in others, and in nature. We are each made in the image of God, and we each carry attributes of The Eternal. Yet even all of humanity together, cannot fully express the fullness of the Eternal.
In Job, The Eternal describes the vastness of creation, and asks Job if he understands it. And the truth is, he didn’t and we don’t either. But maybe we’re not meant to; maybe we’re meant to live in it, just like the rest of creation. The birds don’t need to understand the sky to fly. The ocean doesn’t need to understand itself to move. And perhaps, we don’t need to understand everything about God to exist as children of God.
When the Eternal revealed His name to Moses as YHWH, God described Himself as merciful, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and faithfulness. According to Numbers 23:19, the Eternal is not human, not subject to changing, but instead remains faithful and true.
We are created by The Eternal, and we each carry different expressions of the Eternal’s nature. Some of us may see God as love, others as wisdom, and still others as creativity.
All are true. The Eternal is expansive and without limit. It is not either/or; it never was. It is both/and.
We like to think of it like standing on different sides of the same mountain, each of our viewpoints is a slightly different experience, yet the mountain is the same. Just like creation holds diversity without division, we can too. We all have different perspectives and different experiences, but we are created by the same Source. We all come from and take part in the same Infinite Breath.
Wholeness has never required sameness. It holds it all. We are already whole beings living within the wholeness of creation. We don’t have to reach for it, we simply need to remember it.
So let’s return to something simple: We are not separate from God, creation, or wholeness. We exist within it right now and in every breath. The invitation isn’t to figure everything out, but to rest into that truth.
The kingdom of God is both within and among us (Luke 17:21). Wherever we are, The Eternal is, and wholeness reigns.
