exhaling

I met today with my prayer partner. I meet with him once a week. What do I get out of it? A weekly opportunity to pause and take stock, to confess and bare my soul, letting someone else know what’s troubling me. Why is all this important? A lot of us seem to get along just fine without doing any of these things. But I find that having this weekly rhythm is like breathing. In a sense it’s an opportunity to exhale, to let go of things that have been accumulating in my spirit. The word for spirit in Hebrew is “ruach” which is the same as the word for “breath”. So taking a pause for reflection and confession really is exhaling.

If I don’t take the time to exhale, stuff builds up inside. We exhale to get rid of carbon dioxide and other things our bodies don't need. If we don’t exhale, we’ll lose consciousness (try it some time). I suppose if I didn’t have a time for regular spiritual exhaling, I’d be physically OK. But spiritually, I’d be unconscious, unaware of the movement of God’s Spirit around me because I’d be stifling the flow of God’s Spirit within me.