“A Breath of Fresh Air”
Early this past summer, smoke from fires in Canada wafted through states across the East Coast of our country. However, our turn for smoke was coming. Flakes of ash fell like light snow on our back porch the third Saturday of August as the Oregon Road fire and the Gray fire, each less than twenty-four hours old, raged out of control on opposite ends of town. Suddenly air quality in Spokane spiked the highest and most hazardous scores in the nation on the Air Quality Index (AQI). Our air was thick, gray, and ominous; even the sun had trouble penetrating it.
The AQI measures pollutant levels of Nitrogen Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, Sulfur Dioxide, and Ozone, as well as particulate matter as small as 2.5 microns. Particulates that fine are four to five times smaller than mold spores or pollens. Wildfire smoke contains a complex mixture of all of these pollutants and hundreds more. Each can enter the lungs of a person and if sustained, can begin to cause damage.
Praise God it was not sustained. On Saturday smoke made Spokane’s Air Quality the worst in the nation, by Tuesday morning much needed rain arrived, and by Wednesday the skies lit up bright blue with fluffy white clouds floating high overhead. Spokane could breath again.
Deep in the book of Job, after Job’s afflictions rendered him silent and his final appeal to God was over, a bystander named Elihu attempted to put out the fire for Job with a soliloquy that went on for five chapters. Among his first words to Job were these: “Behold, I am towards God as you are” (Job 33:6) and “the Spirit of God has made me and the breath of the Almighty gives me life” (Job 33:4).
When the smoke of wildfire settles in, we are reminded just how dependent we are on the Lord for every breath. Smoke is so pervasive there is little humans can do, even with our technological advances, to clear the atmosphere. We have to rely on God for fresh breath. A shift in the weather and suddenly the air is clean because the Lord “makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” Matthew 5:45) That gift of the Almighty will put fresh air in our lungs, but God’s interested in giving us more than a good AQI reading. He wants to fill us with his Spirit, and by that breath—his breath—to give us life.
The book of Ecclesiastes repeats a refrain, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2) when talking about the kinds of things people seek after in this world: property, wealth, prestige, leisure activities, power, influence, happiness, and the like. There are multiple ways to translate that word vanity. Many translations use “meaningless,” others use “vapor,” still others use “smoke.” That is the way Eugene Peterson renders it in his devotional paraphrase, The Message, “smoke, nothing but smoke. . . there is nothing to anything—it’s all smoke.” The warning in the book of Ecclesiastes is of a hazardous AQI rating, sustained inhalation of such things become contaminates that do spiritual damage to our everlasting lungs.
Jesus said, seek first his “kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). That is, we need God to clear the air. Only when we are inhaling deeply of his Spirit, of his breath that gives us life, will life have a freshness that fills it with meaning, contentment, purpose, and joy. Only then does the smoke clear. So when everything turns to smoke open up God’s Word, find a Christian friend, come to worship, or close your eyes in prayer and in-so-doing take a deep breath.
Pastor Mike Von Behren