The Dry Bones

Thousands of years ago a man called Ezekiel is given a vision by God.  God takes him to a valley and that valley is filled with dry bones.  There are bones everywhere.  What has happened here?  What has turned this valley into a burial site?  Here in the valley Ezekiel is given time to look around.  He wanders around the valley and he notices how dry the bones are, how sun stained they have become.  He concludes whatever has happened to them they have been dead for a long time. Ezekiel finds himself in this valley surrounded by death, hopelessness and despair.  As far as the eye can see there is only brokenness and emptiness. This is the valley of death.  Dreams have died here, hope for the future has died here, marriages have died here and ministries have died here.  The smell of death is everywhere.  There is not one drop of moisture.  It is completely dry.  There is no hope.

Ezekiel interprets this as Israel, at the time a defeated nature, crushed militarily, families separated by exile and suffering materially.  They are alone, exhausted, discouraged and impoverished.  Israel is as good as dead.  But here we can wander round the bones too and ask what do they mean for us?  What are our dry bones?  The full time parent running errand after errand, and though they know it should be a gift they feel unappreciated and just too tired to have joy in their lives?  Or the teacher who chose teaching as it was their calling over better rewarding roles, only to be met with changing syllabuses, the constant pressure of Ofsted and bullying senior leaders?  The widower who is just so lonely there is no joy without their loved one?  The relationship that has known too many mistakes and forgiveness is now seemingly not an option?  For all who dreamt of what life could be but feel disappointed with how it turned out?  What are your dry bones...?  What is your discouragement?  What is stripping you of joy?  For it is these things that surround us in the valley of dry bones.

And as we wander, as we look at the bones, God asks us a strange question!  ‘Can these dry bones live’? Can the things we are thinking about in the valley live again?  Can joy come back, relationships be revived, exhaustion healed, can we truly live again? 

I remember surfing with friends at Trebareth Strand near Tintagel.  I surf no longer because I am worried I may be harpooned by Greenpeace and thrown into deeper water!  Once I fell off my board and was sucked under the water.  Every time I came up for a breath it was time for another wave to fall on me.  This continued until a friend finally managed to get me to shore.  I wonder if this is how life feels at times.  Wave after wave.  You may have been thinking that your dry bones can live again after the waves… When the children are sleeping I will be less tired and will feel alive but in the meantime I will struggle on… When the big project at work is finished I can breath again but in the meantime I will just keep going… But of course life does not happen in the future when the waves stop, life happens now in the mean time.  Perhaps you may conclude with me that we cannot live fully on our own and we look with Ezekiel at the dry bones and see the impossibility of the situation.  So we say with Ezekiel ‘only you know whether these bones can live again Lord’.

God says to us, ‘Speak to the bones and say to them I am going to put breath into you and you will come to life’.  And Ezekiel does and we are invited to watch something from Friday the 13^th as a great rattling sound fills the valley as bones and ligament join together and get covered with flesh.  Now we have human bodies but they still have no breath in them, they are not yet alive.  Sound familiar?  Looking human but not fully alive?  So Ezekiel is instructed by God to speak to the wind ‘come O breath of the four winds, breath into these dead bodies so they may live again’.  As he does the wind comes, breath comes into their body and they all come alive.  They stand up.  A great army.

Breath, wind and Spirit all have the same Hebrew word of Ruach.  It is God’s Holy Spirit that brings us alive, Gods spirit that turns dry bones into mighty armies!  This for Ezekiel is a promise for Israel but for us it is for our dry bones.  And if we let him, our great God will fill those situations, relationships, exhaustion and impossible situations with his breath and they can live again.  So what are your dry bones?  Why not ask God to breath his Spirit into those situations? Why not ask him to fill you with his Spirit?  Because nothing is impossible and your dry bones they just might live again.  Here is an old song you could use as a prayer as I close.

 

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
fill me with life anew,
that I may love what thou dost love,
and do what thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
until my heart is pure,
until with thee I will one will,
to do and to endure.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
till I am wholly thine,
till all this earthly part of me
glows with thy fire divine.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
so shall I never die,
but live with thee the perfect life
of thine eternity.

The Drawbridge

I was terrified when I logged into facebook the other day.  A great friend had posted a horrendous story guaranteed to give any parent of young children a sleepless night.  It is a story like you may have experienced yourselves. It is a story of a lost child.  This is his story (but with a little/lot of poetic license)! 

It had been a fun day enjoying the Sea Life adventure, but fun would turn to fear when in leaving he finds that both of his children have gone missing.  He starts to look around urgently and thankfully the youngest is in view and scooped up and cuddled appropriately.  The oldest at five is nowhere in sight.  As time goes on the search becomes more urgent, more panicky and more desperate.  The search gets harder as whilst he looks down the roads near the building which his son could have gone down, a drawbridge opens, separating him and the building where his child was last seen.  It was a 4 minute delay as a boat came through that felt more like 4 hours.  Time to think… What if he has fallen in the water and drowned?  What if he has been abducted?  What if? What if? And what if?  Finally the drawbridge is down, and the search commences,  this time with tears running down his cheeks, shouting with a voice that can only shake and with a stomach that has turned to water. What if? What if? What if? And then… thankfully the glorious sight of his son, also with tears running down his cheeks and also shaking with panic, looking for his father with a couple who have stopped to generously help him.  Then the wonderful embrace with more tears, but now tears of relief.  And what did he say? ‘Don’t ever leave me again, you are too precious’.  ‘I love you so much’. ‘You will never know what you mean to me’.  ‘This is me at my happiest with you in my arms’.  ‘You are my child whom I love’.  Or similar words! 

And as I reflected on this story I realised that this is Gods story.  He had lost us, we had wandered off and the drawbridge was up.  We were separated by God because we had turned our backs on him.  We had turned our backs on love.  We have done harm to ourselves, to others and to God and the drawbridge was up.  And God has eyes that look like a power shower as he weeps whilst he desperately tries to reach us, his children (Jeremiah 9:1- my translation)! But Jesus came!  The drawbridge is back down!  He has paid the penalty and the partition has gone.  Now God is this side of the bridge.  And he is looking.  And he finds us looking all around for meaning.  To find what we were created for and to be.  And there are those who know it is God that they were made for and with tears they spot him looking, reaching out, tear stained and desperate and they reach in for the embrace.  And it is there that God says… ‘Don’t ever leave me again, you are too precious’.  ‘I love you so much’. ‘You will never know what you mean to me’.  ‘This is me at my happiest with you in my arms’.  ‘You are my child whom I love’.  Or similar words! 

I wonder how many of us know the story of love but do not know it to the very depths of our being?  I wonder how many of us have our identities based on what others are and what we are not?  She is more caring than I am… he is a better parent… she is more succesful than me… if only I could be more like them.  This is rarely accurate as we tend to compare the things we find difficult and then massively hype those to whom we compare.  And we rarely compare our strengths with others, as often we see our strengths as irrevelant or not important.  I wonder how many of us base our identities around the bad things we have done?  The failures, the hurt, the pain, the relationshps broken and the difficulties we have struggled through.  I wonder how many of us base our identity on what we have achieved?  The quaifications, the opinion of others, our reputation or money earned or as Ministers perhaps on the number in our flock or the number of baptisms we have done!  But our identity as Christians is that we are children of God.  That we were created by him, rescued by him and loved by him for today and eternity.  That we are unique masterpiece being made new morning by morning. 

May you know that you are a child of God and may you know this fact to the very essence of your being.  And it is the Holy Spirit that confirms this to us (have a look at Romans 8).  Why not ask God to fill you with his Spirit?  And as you do so, may you know the wonderful experience of his loving embrace.  And may you hear those incredible words, ‘Don’t ever leave me again, you are too precious’.  ‘I love you so much’. ‘You will never know what you mean to me’.  ‘This is me at my happiest with you in my arms’.  ‘You are my child whom I love’.  

Here is a song to finish with that I pray may help you into his presence to know his embrace…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsL-YtpUdEs