Air

It’s amazing to think that one of the substances we depend on the most, one of the most essential ingredients for our bodies to run on, is surrounding us at all times. Yet we almost never think about it, because it’s completely invisible to us. All we see is the way it affects the world around us.

Air is everywhere: a nice, refreshing cocktail of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and trace amounts of other gases. Without our lungs constantly pulling in that oxygen, our brain would never be able to function, and we’d be dead within minutes. But the act of breathing air is so second-nature to us that it’s even a cliché. When something comes naturally to us, we say it’s “like breathing”.

Air is actually the name given to Earth’s lowest layer of atmosphere, the troposphere. This layer extends up into the sky by 20 km at the equator, ~7 km around the polar regions. It gets thinner as you go up toward the next highest atmospheric layer, the stratosphere. That’s part of the reason planes fly so high above the Earth — the lack of air improves their fuel economy.

From space, air appears blue. When God looks down at our tiny little planet (or any aliens that might also happen to be watching?), He sees a blue planet. It looks that way because air scatters shorter (blue) wavelengths easier than longer (red) wavelengths. That is also why the sky looks blue to us: we’re actually seeing the air over our heads scattering blue light.

There are several parallels between God and air, and I believe He actually intended to communicate these things about Himself to us through air. Remember He didn’t need to make us breathe air; He chose to.

God is invisible, just like air is invisible. Yet we are totally dependent on Him every minute of our lives. We need God to keep us alive, even more than we need to breathe. God faithfully provides us the air we need to breathe. He gives spirits to our bodies, which we also can’t see. We also understand that He is omnipresent. He surrounds the surface of the Earth, just like air. “In him we live and move and have our being.”

Jesus compared the movement of the Spirit of God to the blowing of the wind. We can’t see where He’s going or where He’s coming from, but we feel Him moving and we know He is there. Living a life of faith is often like following the wind. We have to choose to believe God is taking us somewhere, even though we can’t see where.

Semi-related tangent: I tend to waste a lot of my life indoors. When I go outside — particularly when I’m on a field trip out in some godforsaken, rocky wilderness — I’m always struck by how fresh the air is, and how such a subtle difference can change my whole perception of the world. Fresh air is a gift from God that many people forget, or take for granted.

We live in cities for most of our lives. Our appreciation of nature gets swallowed up by all the buildings around us. As a result, we hardly ever get to experience true fresh air. Many of us spend our lives drowning in a sea of smog.

That’s one of the main reasons I love going out into the field. I get a chance to break away from the city life for a couple days, and experience nature as God intended, as He did for 4.5 billion years before we ever came along. I get to breathe fresh air and feel its invigorating power. I think spending a good dose of time in fresh air once in a while is crucial to our physical, mental and spiritual health.