Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: BREATH (11/19/20)
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TITLE: Empty | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
11/25/20 -
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Taking these two days to hike into the middle of nowhere didn’t make sense. The population at Capernaum had exhaled their praise over the touchless healing of a master who would raise up the servant of a foreigner. “Such faith!” we were told hadn’t been displayed in these parts.
Gushing glory is cheap when it can be repaid. Perhaps that’s why we escaped on this knee-sagging adventure where the air is rare. Despite the destiny, the number of foot-weary pilgrims following hadn’t lessened. We could see Nazareth a few bumps across the landscape. A stop there would have made sense considering the master had expended so many of his early breaths there.
As we fought for air on our side of the small village nestled on the hilltop, the loud anguished cries of another crowd moved in our direction. Gushing grief billowed like waves through the tiny settlement and out through the drooping gate that marked the entrance and the exit where we would collide in our journeys. Life was marching into the face of death.
The master stood aside as the others approached. It was as if he had set out two days before for this very moment. A widow, doused in dust, howled her agony toward the Creator of life. She was as empty as the lungs of the only son she had borne. The wave of sorrow washed up on the beach of the heart of the only one who could restore breath to the breathless and we were breathless as we waited to see how the collision of life and death would end.
No matter how great your expectations, heart, mind and lungs forget to work at times in the unexpected. “Don’t cry,” he said.
“Don’t cry?” In the face of mind-numbing, soul-paralyzing, lung-emptying grief? “Don’t cry?” The breath of a compassionate healer could find a million sounds to comfort and console but “Don’t cry?”
Perhaps to the professional wailers piercing ear-drums with their shrieks; perhaps to the on-lookers along for the walk; perhaps to the neighbors who let the widow struggle day after day hoping against hope for the life of the only one she had. But, “don’t cry” to the mother of a dead son?
Taking in a breath, the master of life stepped toward the bier. The four bearers stood still, waiting, watching, wondering how a man of influence and holiness could violate every sense of propriety and self-protection. Heaven and earth stood still, hovering over this moment in breathless wonder. What would he do?
“Get up!” said life to death. “Get up!”
Breath that blew life into the first man hovered over the chaos and emptiness of the lifeless. Fluttering eyelids, tremoring fingertips, a shudder as lungs drew in the offered life. Cold, grey, clammy, unresponsive cadaver warming, pinking, pulsing. Up he sat, letting out his breath in a flurry of words as if he had been silenced for an eternity. Gushing glory to the giver of life. A glory in no way cheap.
The smile of the first dawn rose on the face of the Creator of Life as he placed the hand of the newborn into the arms of his mother.
And when the breathless one breathed again, we breathed in awe and praise to God. We breathed in awe not only because the life-giver had done what the life-giver does. We breathed in awe because days before he had known to be here. He had known that the lung-emptying sighs and cries of a mother would need to be heard and answered by a God with skin on.
The wailers sucked in their cries; the skeptics checked their tongues; the desperate drew in hope. “God has come to help his people,” they cried. And with every breath, on every tongue, the news drifted across the hilltops, down into the valleys, across the seas, and into the hearts of those who longed for life. “God had come to help his people.” A breath could not exhale more glory than that.
(Luke 7:11-17)
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