Can you get a pulse?

Countless times I have been witness to nurses checking a person’s pulse to determine their health condition, not to mention my own every time I visit the Urgent Care for some illness. Blood pressure, pulse and temperature are always checked to determine basic health conditions.

Recently I was listening to a science documentary on television when they discussed the Big Bang theory and the perfect place of our universe in the midst of expansion and contraction. This is life! This is God! There was a pulse from something or someone outside of what we know as our three dimensional universe and life came into being. The pulse is like a heartbeat, expansion and contraction. The heart shoots out life giving blood and brings it back to reenergize it, to run it back through the power mill of oxygen in the lungs in order to feed the rest of the body – brain, organs, limbs, etc. During the season of Christmas, will your pulse rate change? Based on what you feed your body, mind and soul? Keep Christ at the center of your life, your heart. Don’t get trapped with the pulse sent out by consumerism and the superficial stimulation of all that glitters, since you know the rest of that cliché (all that glitters is not gold).

The sound of the heartbeat is the basic rhythm used in all Native American drumming. Did you know that? I would challenge you that it is the basic rhythm that makes a tune pulse right or else it drives us crazy. If the beat is off, the rhythm doesn’t make sense, it sends our nervous system into some kind of shock! We cannot stand to hear a musical piece left incomplete, without the final note, the final pulse. Christmas music has a pulse of life, light and love! Do you feel it?

In the incarnation, God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, out in an expansion of himself to energize and offer life to humanity and creation. Then God drew Him back again. God then sent his Holy Spirit to empower our breath with His breath, our spirits with His Spirit, our minds with the mind of Christ, our hearts with the very pulse of life that enables perfect rhythm. God is at the origin and the apex of breathing in and breathing out, expansion and contraction.

Where there is no pulse, there is no life. Life is not experienced in a healthy way without going out and coming back in. Jesus is clearly described as life in John 1:3, “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” Jesus also puts it this way, as recorded in John 15:4a,9b, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Abide in my love.” Stay in Jesus during Christmas. Stay in His love. As we have a pulse, as we have life in us, we have the thread of life in us that is Christ wanting to not only give life to our bodies, but also to our minds and our souls. To “know” this, is to know the love of God made available in Jesus Christ.

So we go out into the world with life, with the love of God in Christ Jesus. We go out to share the good news and to give energy and sustenance to those who are starving for air, for breath, for a stronger pulse, for balance. We come back again into worship, into meditation and reflection on the living and written Word of God. Out and back in again. Breathing out and breathing in. The heartbeat! The pulse of life. Christmas music that pulsates with something indescribable! Life!

How’s your pulse rate? Put your finger on your wrist and feel. Do you feel the presence of God? Do you feel life pulsing through you? Do you feel the love of God manifest in your wrist, in your finger, in your mind, heart and soul? Joy to the World if so. If not, you’re dead!