[If you really want the full effect, I wrote this while listening to "beauty into wreck" by Lowercase noises. Click here to listen while you read]. 

The very first breath ever breathed on this earth was a shared one. The exhale of one meant the inhale of another. A new life began, matching the rhythm, breathing in tandem, with the creator.  At first there was just molded clay, a bit of dirt, but then the extraordinary happened. God breathed.

God’s air filling, filling, filling, until. . .life. Breath. Open eyes.  A heart beat. The rising and falling of a chest. In one moment born into greatness, born into likeness.

Born into likeness. You, yes you, were made with the thumbprint of someone greater etched into the fabric of your being. The very first breath was born out of a love so endless, so divine, it demanded creativity.  The Perfect One, without any need or capacity for dependence, set His love on one species in all of creation by tying the very image Himself to them. "So God made man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them" (Gen. 1:27).

What does it mean that we reflect the Father? How could it be that we look like Him? Why did God even create at all? He could have saved Himself the heartache and pain, the unfolding drama of history, if He'd chosen to do this differently. What does it say about His character, about His heart, if the God who needed nothing gave His heart to His creation -- on purpose? On purpose. He's God, there's nothing He didn't foresee, nothing He didn't know, but He did it anyway. Long before there was any curse, or sin, or law, or even humans to be saved, Jesus was the Lamb slain. He gives His love on purpose.

With that first breath, there was love. By bestowing His own image, there was love. With the fact that He even made us at all, there was love. Have you ever been jealous of stars? They may have been spoken into endless glory, but you, you were breathed into it.