One of the mental images I took away from the Prepare conference last summer was this.

How many times have we traveled on planes and listened to flight attendants deliver their rehearsed message about airline safety?

If you’re anything like me you probably do one of two things when this pre-flight routine beings: 1) check out, or 2) see how closely you can come to reciting the message from memory.

If we’ve flown with any regularity at all, we’ve learned that “should the cabin lose pressure, oxygen masks will drop down from a panel above our seat,” and for those of us with kids, we’ve come to understand the importance of “first putting on our own mask, before assisting any children we might be sitting with.”

As a parent this might seem counter-intuitive… because there is something innate within us that says: I will look out for my kids — first and foremost — regardless of what it might cost me.

But during one of morning times of worship, one of the pastoral care-givers for the conference reminded us that:

Prayer is the oxygen of our souls.

She went on to suggest that, this being true, we must first tend to our own breathing before we should attempt to help others (students) with theirs.

It was a great reminder for me that I cannot give that which I do not have for myself.

For some of us, our student leaders will be returning to campus in less than a month… and so I wonder:

• how might we still make time and space in our lives to breathe in the upcoming month before a new year of ministry begins?
• how do we need to tend to our own souls right now, so that we are in a more ‘tuned-in’ place with the Spirit of God, when it comes time to pour ourselves out into the lives of students?