“God formed a man from the dust of the ground, and the Lord breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living being.” Genesis2:7
We are made of dust. We are of the earth, limited in time and space. But dust alone is not enough to make a human, no matter how well it’s crafted. What makes someone a living being is the breath of God. That breath isn’t ours by ‘right’. It belongs to God and He freely chooses to give it to us.
As humans, we are reliant on the Lord’s ongoing gift of His breath. It places us in a very precarious and fragile place. But this vulnerability isn’t a result of sin; it isn’t some sort of punishment. This precarious moment by moment living is what it means to live a normal, healthy life as a human being, dependent on God.
The first humans wanted more – they tried to ‘become like God’ and it cost them dearly. The same temptation costs us as we seek to do the same.
So, let us be content to be human: limited, fragile, and reliant on God, whose image we bear and whose breath we breathe. Do that well and we’ll know what it truly means to be alive, one breath at a time.