breathe

I thinking about breathing a lot today, because in a few hours, I'm doing a funeral for Becky Stubbs - a great young lady who struggled her entire life with Cystic Fibrosis and never truly breathed deeply, but breathed deep of God's love through Jesus and the Spirit (breath) who lived in her. There was a breath of fresh air yesterday in our congregation as I announced that the elders have committed to give away the amount of money in our general fund giving that is over our projected budget need. As of Sunday, that total was around $350K and I can't wait to see what it is at the end our fiscal year (end of August). We are being generous because God has been generous with us and we are trusting He will be generous in meeting our future needs. I'm catching my breath ahead of a really busy summer in which we will start a new study (Unchained - study through Paul's prison epistles) in July, host the Global Leadership Summit (video site) in August, and vision Sunday August 18th. Even now we are writing and planning our video taping of the all church study for this Fall. whatever you're doing today...take a deep breath and thank God for it... Here is an excerpt from Becky's funeral sermon: Psalm 150:6 - "Let everything that has breath praise The Lord. Praise The Lord!" Becky may not have been able to breathe deeply, but she added her praise to God with every other breathing thing in this world. And today, in spite of our sadness at losing her in an earthly sense, we too can be those who breathe and praise The Lord. And we can be sure that because this breath, this wind of the Holy Spirit filled Becky's soul while she was with us, that His presence in eternity is allowing her to breathe more deeply of the love of God than you and I can even imagine. So we keep breathing and we wait for our last breath - that will actually be our first eternally in Christ!