Astrobiology Magazine has an article at Space.com titled "What Is Life? A New Theory"

The article starts out: 

Biology is often called the study of life, yet in the history of the field, experts have never agreed on just what, exactly, life is.

Sometimes the old news about life is adequate.  There's LIFE and then there's LIVING.

The first thing called "living" in the Bible, were the air and sea creatures God created on the 5th day, and on the land on the 6th day.  God had not called the plants living.

Genesis 1:20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." 23 And there was evening, and there was morning–the fifth day. 24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

In Genesis 2:7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

The creatures created prior to man, were not said to have received this treatment from God.  Why would they?  They were not what God had set his focus on when he determined "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

What did God breathe into us – just air?  James 4 says "God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us".

Then mankind is something very unique – a living creature carying the spirit God has placed in us.  And we know God doesn't die – He is eternal, and so is that spirit within us.  This is the eternal life Jesus Christ came to save – OUR eternal lives.

Jesus says “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Jesus is referring to something more than the life so many men and women put up with – the daily grind.  Several of the articles below describe the purposeful LIFE God has in mind for us, which sets the pattern for our eternity.

If you have not devoted your life to God, I urge you to do so.