Skip to main content

Dry bones, a huge stone, and withered limb

Dry bones in the valley....the crippled and paralyzed by the roadside....the tomb - what do these three have in common?

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.” (Ezekial 37:1-3)

Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of sick people—blind, crippled, paralyzed—were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, “Do you want to get well?” The sick man said, “Sir, when the water is stirred, I don’t have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in.” Jesus said, “Get up, take your bedroll, start walking.” The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off. (John 5:1-9)

After the Sabbath, as the first light of the new week dawned, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to keep vigil at the tomb. Suddenly the earth reeled and rocked under their feet as God’s angel came down from heaven, came right up to where they were standing. He rolled back the stone and then sat on it. Shafts of lightning blazed from him. His garments shimmered snow-white. The guards at the tomb were scared to death. They were so frightened, they couldn’t move. The angel spoke to the women: “There is nothing to fear here. I know you’re looking for Jesus, the One they nailed to the cross. He is not here. He was raised, just as he said. Come and look at the place where he was placed.(Matthew 28:1-6)

Dry bones - so many they fill the valley's floor - so dry there is no hope for them to reveal life again. Bleached by the sun, brittle, resembling nothing but death. Can these bones live? Blind, crippled, paralyzed - lined up day after day, all with a place that defines them as 'needy' and 'lame' - will they ever be well again? A tomb - rock solid - stone sealed into place. Can anything good come from the death sealed within? The answer to all these questions is YES! The one thing all these 'limiting things' have in common is God! Where he speaks - even the hardest of things are possible. He is so much more than the 'limitations' we see in our lives.

Dry places in our lives need not keep us dry - for life is as close as the very breath of God breathed into that place of dryness and barrenness. What seems hopeless in our mind is true potential in his. Crippled and discarded parts of our lives - made straight again, worth something of value - by the creative word of God. A stone blocking the way - sealing inside death and hopelessness - rolled away, no longer giving cover to death, but opening the way for life to come forth. These are the things God sees when he sees the very things we see as nothing more than hindrances or barriers in our lives.

Where the presence of God is - there is life. Where the word of God is - there is hope. Where the breath of God is - there is vision and purpose. We might see the barrier - God only sees what is just on the other side of that barrier. Maybe we need to change how we view the dry places - the mangled and maimed places of our character - the hugeness of the thing we think could never be removed from our lives. God is about to break forth in ways we might not have considered before. Why does God ask the questions? Maybe it is to find out what we see the most. If all we see is the barrier, we might never look beyond that barrier. The questions God brings aren't a challenge to our faith as much as they are a challenge to look beyond what we see as limitations and allow God to show us what is just beyond what we see as impossibilities. Just sayin!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What did obedience cost Mary and Joseph?

As we have looked at the birth of Christ, we have considered the fact he was born of a virgin, with an earthly father so willing to honor God with his life that he married a woman who was already pregnant.  In that day and time, a very taboo thing.  We also saw how the mother of Christ was chosen by God and given the dramatic news that she would carry the Son of God.  Imagine her awe, but also see her tremendous amount of fear as she would have received this announcement, knowing all she knew about the time in which she lived about how a woman out of wedlock showing up pregnant would be treated.  We also explored the lowly birth of Jesus in a stable of sorts, surrounded by animals, visited by shepherds, and then honored by magi from afar.  The announcement of his birth was by angels - start to finish.  Mary heard from an angel (a messenger from God), while Joseph was set at ease by a messenger from God on another occasion - assuring him the thing he was about to do in marrying Mary wa

A brilliant display indeed

Love from the center of who you are ; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply ; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. (Romans 12:9-12) Integrity and Intensity don't seem to fit together all that well, but they are uniquely interwoven traits which actually complement each other. "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it." God asks for us to have some intensity (fervor) in how we love (from the center of who we are), but he also expects us to have integrity in our love as he asks us to be real in our love (don't fake it). They are indeed integral to each other. At first, we may only think of integrity as honesty - some adherence to a moral code within. I believe there is a little more to integrity than meets the eye. In the most literal sense,

Do me a favor

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:1-4) Has God's love made ANY difference in your life? What is that difference? Most of us will likely say that our lives were changed for the good, while others will say there was a dramatic change. Some left behind lifestyles marked by all manner of outward sin - like drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, or even thievery. There are many that will admit the things they left behind were just a bit subtler - what we can call inward sin - things like jealousy,