Genesis 1-3

Happy New Year! It’s great to be starting 2024 with you. My prayer is that this year will find each of us walking closer with God, bolder in our faith, and being the men and women God intends for us to be in a world that so desperately needs Him.

Reading the Creation story never gets old for me. This beautiful world was created by a loving God in such an organized, rational, perfect way. You and I are wonderfully made by a Creator who wants us to know Him! That never gets boring!

What struck me today was the fact that, although Adam’s body was fashioned by God using things He had already created, that body lay dormant until God breathed His own breath into Adam’s lungs. Adam inhaled the very breath of God! YAHWEH.

People have noted that if you pay attention to your own breathing you can hear yourself whispering God’s Name. YAH-WEH. YAH-WEH.

Try it. The inhale sounds like YAH. The exhale, WEH.

YAH-WEH. YAH-WEH.

Siri tells me we take about 20,000 breaths a day. Like it or not, you acknowledge your Creator 20,000 times a day just by breathing. It was the first name on your lips the moment you were born. It will be the last name on your lips before you die.

YAH-WEH.

I find that incredibly precious. Intimate. God makes Himself known to me 20,000 times a day.

Now, I don’t know if that was God’s intention, the Bible doesn’t say. But I do know Adam came alive because of God’s breath in His lungs. And I know that it is the Breath of Life in me that allows me the courage to face the uncertainty of a new year.

And if it’s true that the Name of Yahweh is breathed in and out in me 7,300,000 times in 2024, I pray that it will bring joy to the God who created me, and longs for me to know Him.

I pray that for you, too.