Day 53 - Breathe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZhUesUaM98

The week after Easter Sunday is one of the strangest weeks in the church's year.

We've sung the alleluias. We've told the story. The tomb is empty, the stone rolled away, the grave clothes folded neatly as if someone had all the time in the world. And now — what? The Easter eggs are eaten. The lilies start to droop. People go back to work, and the world carries on as if nothing has happened.

But something has happened. The biggest thing that has ever happened. And somehow we have to keep living inside it.

This is the air I breathe. This is the air I breathe. Your holy presence, living in me.

Marie Barnett wrote this song in a few minutes, on a keyboard at the back of a church during worship. She didn't labour over it. She didn't work endless on Bible passages. It arrived the way breath arrives — naturally, necessary, quiet. Which is perhaps exactly right for what it's saying.

Breath is the most ordinary thing in the world. You've already taken several since you started reading this. You didn't think about any of them. And yet, stop breathing, and nothing else matters.

The risen Christ doesn't arrive in the days after Easter with fanfare and proclamations. He arrives in the way breath arrives. He stands in a locked room and says peace be with you. He walks alongside two confused disciples on a dusty road, and they don't recognise him until he breaks the bread. He's on the beach with a charcoal fire ready, asking not for a deep and meaningful conversation but for breakfast.

He is simply present. Near. Ordinary in the most extraordinary way.

And I, I'm desperate for you. And I, I'm lost without you.

There's a vulnerability in those lines that feels true to this week. The disciples don't quite know what to do with themselves. The resurrection has answered one question and opened a dozen others. They're not triumphant. They're bewildered, wondering, tentative. They are — like us, perhaps — trying to breathe in something they can't yet fully take in.

That's not a failure of faith. That's what faith actually looks like in the days after the most momentous few days that have ever been witnessed on earth. You breathe. You wait. You let the presence settle into you slowly, the way lungs fill without being told.

The week after Easter isn't an anticlimax. It's an invitation.

An invitation to start living God’s love in this world. To let the alleluias become something quieter and deeper — not a shout but a breath. Not a statement but a way of being.

This is my daily bread. Your very word spoken to me.

Daily bread. Not Easter Sunday bread. Daily. Ordinary. Again and again and again.

So breathe. The tomb is still empty. The presence is still here. And the most faithful thing you might do this week is simply — breathe.

Neil Chappell