Every Breath You Take

From a very early age, I have been an Engineer. I am very much at home in the rational and explicable. I love science and delight in using it to design practical solutions to things. You might therefore appreciate that my first truly spiritual experience was somewhat of a shock to me. It took me a long time to realise that the scientific tools at our disposal only model what we have so far managed to understand about our universe, and that there is vastly more to be discovered – some of which will baffle and surprise the generations to come much as it has the generations which precede us.

As such, our spiritual experiences can provide glimpses into phenomena which may only be explained to humanity centuries into the future, and may reflect dimensions outside of the three we are currently equipped to perceive. But that does not make them any less real, it just makes them harder to explain and to replicate in a way which conforms to the limitations of our current paradigms of scientific knowledge.

I am unlikely to be around (in any corporeal sense at least) at the point our science catches up with some of this stuff, but in the meantime I have found great blessing in:

As a result of this combination of the spiritual and the scientific, I have been able to experience moments of great joy and intense emotion and insight that would have been closed to me if I had restricted myself to just one or the other, and I have been able to connect with my surroundings, and the things I come into contact with, far more intensely. As Johannes Kepler put it – science is merely thinking God’s thoughts after Him – but what a blessing that can be!

The most spiritually uplifting place I have ever been, was sat on a rock beside the shores of Lake Galilee. When I think about it, I can still feel a sense of the peace and the sense of love and connectedness that enveloped me there. I leaned forward and picked up a small pebble and wondered whether the soles of Jesus’ feet had touched its surface, or whether the smallest molecule of Jesus’ being, as he stepped into the lake all those years ago, still remained and might be present on what I held in the palm of my hand.

As it turns out, it was!  But not in the way I first thought. The molecules which make up our bodies, and comprise the food that we eat, the water we drink and the air that we breathe, are incredibly small things. So small in fact that even one small mouthful of water (about 18 ml) contains approximately 600 Billion Trillion molecules. That is 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. This number (known as Avogadro’s Number after the person who first proposed it) is so big that it is usually represented as 6×10²³ (i.e. 6 with 23 zeros after it).

For those of you who, like me, gain an extra spiritual frisson by reflecting on our literal connections with Jesus (such as picking up a pebble from the shores of Galilee) the size of this number provides some amazing opportunities to connect physically – opportunities of which many of us may not be aware.

For instance, when you take bread at communion, you are consuming at least 400 molecules that were once physically part of Jesus’ body. And when you take a small sip of communion wine, you have on your lips approximately 30 molecules of the blood He shed for you on the cross.

And while these molecules may be physically indistinguishable from the vast number of molecules that Jesus didn’t breathe, eat, or shed, they can contain additional meaning, a divine spiritual link imbued by being aware of their connection, a connection that I personally find uplifting. The idea that I am actually receiving one small part of the body He gave to be broken for me, and of the blood that He shed for me, and that I am aware of this fact at the moment I receive them somehow adds something for me. And while I recognise that, in the overall scheme of things, it is not actually relevant to my salvation or my relationship with Him, I do still find blessing in the thought and a warm glow that augments my faith. And I wish the same blessing on you.

You might also like to reflect that the morsel of communion bread also contains approximately 4 molecules of the loaf that Jesus broke on that fateful Thursday. When we partake of the communion wafer we really do, quite literally, share with His disciples in the last supper. And the same is true for everything we eat and drink. We may not be ‘worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under His table’, but He has provided us with a physical environment which ensures they are an intrinsic staple in every meal.

Furthermore, when you pray out loud for something that really matters to you, you can be reasonably sure that one molecule which passes your vocal chords was used by Jesus to still the storm, and another was used by Him to forgive the thief by His side. Statistically, every breath you take contains one molecule of every breath that Jesus took. So when you next expend a breath in blessing, you may be blessed to reflect that, statistically, it contains one molecule of air from EACH AND EVERY prayer, blessing, and expression of love that Jesus ever made. You may also like to reflect on echoes from Genesis 2:7  “… and He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”

Please feel free to trust me on the above, but for any who are curious or skeptical, please click here to see my workings out and the assumptions on which they were based.