Connected

I’ve been mulling over starting up my blog again for a while.  One on my goals this year is to start making an intentional effort to write again.  Putting a new face on the site is fun, with a new title to go with the updated look.  I’ve kept all the old posts under Ancaro Imparo, but wanted a new focus. 

So, welcome to Connected!  I will attempt to capture strings of thought here, form them into sentences and pull them together in somewhat in a grammatical format. 

Connected – it comes from a thought I had late last summer when on a walk to work, I noticed a beautiful rose lying on the sidewalk.  Light pink petals looked as if they were in the fullness of bloom, pointing to a green stem about four inches long.  The flower looked as if had been arranged just so, and as if it were wonderfully, vibrantly alive.  And yet, I know that no matter how beautiful the rose on the sidewalk was, without being connected to its source of life, it is only a matter of time until the death it was already experiencing begins to show.

Now, I’m not taking a morbid turn here.  Really, I promise!  Instead, I’m pointing to life, and being connected to the source of life.  What is that source?  Genesis 2:7 tells it quite clearly (if not simply), “then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”  A deceptively simple phrase really, with three key words – formed, breathed, and became. 

God formed the man.  Forget the whole chicken/egg discussion, this is the order stated in matter of fact terms.  There is dust of the ground, you know – dirt.  God, the ultimate artist, crafted a physical matter creation.  I do say ultimate artist because of the interconnected complexity of the human body.  The many parts must work just so for physical life to be able to exist.  Each muscle, sinew, bone, tissue, and cell was thought through and planned out.  We are not helter skelter craft projects.

God breaths into the formed man of dust the breath of life.  I think of breath of life, and see them in two different ways.  First, there is physical breath, like the first breath of air a baby draws once being born.  We continue to draw breath throughout our physical life, many times not even thinking about the spontaneous movement of air movement to and from our lungs.  Then not only physical breath, but the breath of the spiritual life; the creation of the soul.  God creates this wonderfully complex body and then breathes life into it, life of body and of spirit.  In other words, not only can we form the camera to capture the moment of a sunrise, but can enjoy it, and can return glory to the creator of that very sunrise in our praise.

God makes man to become a living creature.  Notice that until the life is breathed in, man is not living.  It seems rather rudimentary, but how often do we lose sight of the fact that we did not make ourselves come to life.  No, the formation and breathing create the becoming – and bring about the need for connectedness with the one who created us.