Job says that we are born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, and sometimes I think he’s being too hopeful. At least sparks are beautiful, like tiny comet showers turned upside down. At least they give off light.
Other times I feel keenly my spark-ness, and know exactly what he meant: the shortness of my trajectory, the smallness of my pinpoint of heat, the hugeness of dark, impersonal air surrounding me, which will not remember the little swerve I do, riding the rising air, before I go out, disintegrate, land a few feet away, in silence, as three separate specks of ash.
God, You made Adam out of dust, and the one thing we humans can do without Your help is return to the dust. What we can’t do on our own strength is breathe. Or touch one another in ways that mean something. Or last. We cannot bring together what is torn apart in ourselves, what is quickly or slowly, but inevitably, killing us.
And so what you did was give up infinity, and come to be finitely alive in a body with all the boundaries our bodies have. Mucus and scars and the flu. Ingrown toenails. Also hunger, laughter, bones that break, a heart that does weird fishy flops sometimes for no good reason. But in that finite body you were alive, not because you were superman, God-faking-human, but because you were utterly dependent on God even though you were God. You breathed deep the air of your real human need, and now God can live in us again because of you.
Because in You, the split core of the cosmos was healed; in You, our broken hearts need not despair of being made whole.
Lord Christ, you have resurrected us, not just in your dying and rising but in the plain glory of your living. You have made the dead bones of our lives not only rise up and take on flesh, but breath too. You have not only satisfied justice; you have made justice burst into blossom, into living flame. In You, mercy grows mighty, and justice grows tender. They are a living shoot at the center of the city that will stand at the end of time, burning but not consumed. And when all creatures are made fully themselves, we will come to that tree, an oak with limbs so vast that no one who seeks shelter will be turned away. We will come, with throats made new, and lips, and lungs, so that we can bear to breathe fire, breathe your life.