God grabbed me. God’s Spirit took me up and set me down in the middle of an open plain strewn with bones. He led me around and among them – a lot of bones! There were bones all over the plain – dry bones, bleached by the sun. He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”I said, “Master God, only you know that.” He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones: ‘Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!’” God, the Master, told the dry bones, “Watch this: I’m bringing the breath of life to you and you’ll come to life. I’ll attach sinews to you, put meat on your bones, cover you with skin, and breathe life into you. You’ll come alive and you’ll realize that I am God!” Ezekiel 37:1-6 | MSG
With Advent and Christmas now in the rear-view mirror, and Lent/ Easter looming in the windshield before us, my mind thinks of a composer whose greatest known work serves as a bridge between both – George Friedrich Handel. When G. F. Handel wrote the “Hallelujah Chorus,” his health and his fortunes had reached an all time low. His right side had become paralyzed, and all his money was gone. Handel was heavily in debt and threatened with imprisonment. He was tempted to give up the fight. All the odds seemed against him. The mountain before him seemed entirely too steep to climb. And yet, it was in this dark valley that he composed his greatest work– “The Messiah” It’s not much of a stretch to say that the Spirit entered into him and set him upon his feet.
As odd as it sounds to us today, God instructs Ezekiel to prophesy… to a valley of dry bones. God’s visions can be odd and strange things sometimes.
“I’m bringing the breath of life to you and you’ll come to life.” Ezekiel’s message could just as easily have been,
“I’m bringing grace to you. I’ll breathe grace into you, and you’ll come alive!” Ezekiel was tasked with bringing a message of hope to a people whose hope was all but gone. Have you ever known any people like that? In the conclusion of her book, God Unbound: Wisdom From Galatians For The Anxious Church, Elaine Heath includes, “A Letter To The Church” in her Epilogue. A portion of that letter follows here.
“Beloved church, can we agree to let God have our anxiety? God knows how hard it is for us to let go.We simply have to be willing to be made willing. Just a tiny degree of openness allows God to work with us—like dandelion seeds. They blow on the wind, fall into every crack in the asphalt—and before you know it a parking lot is in full bloom. Church, do you realize we are on the cusp of a new Great Awakening? And it looks like a spiritual dandelion explosion as far as the eye can see. God’s new thing is networked, exponential, Spirit-breathed, decentralized, a vast planting of small communities of faith that birth small communities of faith that continue to multiply. It is very much the work of laypeople, and it is emerging as a natural progression out of the church that used to be.” Elaine Heath
“Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come;
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead us home.”
Grace-filled by Grace,
Jon (the Methodist)