It’s good to stare out the window at nature and wonder. To be curious how, despite the odds, it’s increasingly alive, seemingly, with no effort beyond its own existence. How, in such a small area by which the human eye can see, there can be such an area teeming with unending recyclable life. Breathing with the wind. Glistening beneath the morning sun. Confident that, no matter the day’s weather, life will be sustained, grown, and flourished. Almost, you would say, a natural arrogance to assume so much. To be clothed with such beauty, only a creator could perfect and set loose for a time.

And how humankind, in its impotent flurry of busy, is often so hopelessly desperate for even a single breath that isn’t helplessly laborious. A breathing without freedom, no doubt, is what many of us have resigned ourself to. A breathing that almost, for fear of a further tightening down, must ask for permission to move. Building, day-to-day, an overarching symbol of both emptiness and wandering. Breathing for what? Fighting for what?

Both the happiness of the sky’s wide open expanse and the nightmare of something being around the next corner. More than an irrational fear, call it: a smushed down life. Wrapped around our lungs, keeping us from laughter. Keeping us from our humanity. From living, from dying. The freedom to be human, to make mistakes, and to apologize. Freedom to chose a new day. Freedom to see simple joys. Freedom to be excited.

Living in constriction, we’re always fighting to get out, but, without the Spirit, only a bleak impossibility remains. With certain actions, we will feel out. Maybe for a time. Possibly, even for a long time, but, eventually, the tightness will return to inflict upon our soul the slow havoc that anxiety often does. The fear. One worry adding up unto another, until, finally, all of life, a worry. Daily living, nothing but a concern. Every blink of the eye, a constriction.

Living like nature, we find the Spirit. As nature is unashamed of who it is and also fearless in transformation. Nature, like Moses, lives unveiled in creation and so represents accurately how we too can breathe easy, taking in the morning light, and preparing for the days renewal through resistance. The Spirit defines freedom because it’s all that’s truly free and so, to enjoy the spoils of unrestricted breathing, we, too, would do well to study the freedom of natural creation even, if, only through a window.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” ‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭3‬:‭17‬ ‭NIV‬‬