BREATHING
READ Job 27:3–4
As long as my breath is in me and the spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips will not speak falsehood, and my tongue will not utter deceit.
MEDITATE
Job plunks himself down, bone weary, on an infamous ash heap. He has lost everything—his sons and daughters, his livelihood, his house, and now his health. He is abandoned on the ash heap, scraping his wounds with the sharp-edged fragments of clay pots.
Here in the valley of the shadow of death a beleaguered man protests that he would never speak a false word as long as he lives. “As long as my breath is in me and the Spirit of God is in my nostrils,” Job mutters, “my lips will not speak falsehood, and my tongue will not utter deceit.” Here is the bare-bones expression of faith: the Spirit of God inspires us even—especially—at the doorstep of death. The Spirit of God inspires us even—especially—when we let the breath in our lungs roll over our tongues in words full of integrity and truth.
The Spirit in Job is not the power of victorious living—at least not victorious living in the sense of escape from illness and poverty and grief. The Spirit in Job is not the source of abundant life—at least not abundant life with a permanent smile full of bright white teeth and all the trappings of security and success. The Spirit in Job doesn’t manufacture what’s astonishing—miracles and healing and brilliant sermons—at least not for this exhausted human being.
This Spirit is simply breath—and not very much of it at all. Job is exhausted, winded, we might say: short on God’s wind, short on God’s breath, short on God’s Spirit. But he has just enough Spirit-breath to open his dry, cracked, dying lips and say, “As long as my breath is in me and the spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips will not speak falsehood, and my tongue will not utter deceit.”
Three small, short, seemingly insignificant words we nearly pass over—as long as—show us that Job is not making his faith up as he goes. This little phrase, as long as, comes from Israel’s book of poetry. The steely resolve of the Psalms fuels Job’s conviction:
I will sing to the LORD as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have being. (Psalm 104:33)
I will praise the LORD as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God all my life long. (Psalm 146:2)
Like the poets whose psalms he has memorized, Job lives along the hard edge between death and life, with the Spirit-breath nearly gone, his words no more than a protest whispered into the wind. But there, on the ash heap, as long as he still lives, as long as God’s Spirit-breath is in him, Job will speak the truth.
Job gets it. He knows that inspiration happens in the fragile fragment of life that inhabits the valley of the shadow of death—only as long as he lives and breathes. Life in the Spirit is not just a moment’s pleasure, a miracle here or there, but a habit. And that habit is carved out of the cliffs of chaos and despair as long as there remains a whiff of God’s Spirit-breath in us.
BREATHE 
PRAY
Holy Spirit
As long as I live, let me breathe out God’s praise
While I still live, let me exhale God’s truth
And with death around me
When health drops away
Let me breathe out God’s truth
Let me sing, soft but strongly, God’s praise
Amen