God breathes into dry bones

I sat at the bedside of a dying woman last week, and have a good friend who is close to death at this moment. Loss and pain are all around me, more visible than usual. If you're reading this, you may be carrying a heavy load of loss.

Yes, we know our loved is with the Lord, but God did create grief, sadness, and even anger as the normal ways to feel as we adjust to being without a beloved, as long as we don't move into these feelings permanently.

Another way we can feel--or not feel--is dried up, like the bones in Ezekiel 37. Yes, I know this passage is a prophecy about Israel that is at least partially fulfilled with their return to the Promised Land. However, with the richness of God's word, the description of the bones and God's comforting solution surely has the double meaning for us in our dry times.

The Lord took hold of me, and I was carried away by the Spirit of the Lord to a valley filled with bones. He led me around among the old, dry bones that covered the valley floor...Then he asked me, "Son of man, can these bones become living people again?"

"O Sovereign Lord," I replied, "you alone know the answer to that."

Then he said to me, "Speak to these bones and say, "Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Look! I AM going to breathe into you and make you live again! I will put flesh and muscles on you and cover you with skin. I will put breath into you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I AM the Lord."

Ezekiel 37:1-6

Lord, breathe into me, and fill me today with your hope and life so I may honor you in all I do. Thank you that you are with me in all that I do and go ahead of me wherever I go. Praise your name in dry times and full times!

Joy in HIS salvation

When I was in college in the 1970s, I wrote a song with these verses from Habakkuk as the lyrics. In those days, I could play the piano and write music. In fact, until the last few years, I could play and compose. I took them for granted, even though I enjoyed them as gifts of God.

Now, only with the right combination of seizure meds can I play, and that is nothing like the old days. Composition may be gone until I'm with the Lord. Bummer having a tumor right in the creative part of the brain. It also hits the auditory cortex and autobiographical memory, so I can't even listen to my own music without problems. There are certainly far worse problems, far worse tumors. I'm simply letting you who love music into my world a bit, to give you some understanding.

Aren't these verses wonderful? One of the ways God's word shows its power is that it was fresh and powerful to me all those years ago, and yet this very passage is all the deeper in meaning to me today, when I have so many new ways to chose to joy in the God of my salvation.

All of you have some losses, somewhere that the fig tree is not blossoming, the grapes are no longer on the vines. We all choose to joy in the Lord or not. He is our strength if we make the choice. And oh! The heights we can reach!

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights [or, he brings me safely over the mountains].

Habakkuk 3:17-19

Finding the meaning

When I've gone through my hardest times, when it seemed like I was hanging on almost second to second, I felt a desperate intimacy with God that only comes when there's nowhere else to turn. It was--"Give me an IV of your strength, or I'll never get through this day!" And--"Thank you! I needed that!" throughout the day.

I didn't have time to wonder about the greater meaning or outcome, or even why the problems were in my life. I was hanging onto God for dear life, and feeling his presence in ways you only feel when he's your only hope. It didn't take long after things eased up to see how I could encourage others by sharing from what I learned by surviving serious, life-threatening problems.

But what if you don't think the trials beating you down are glamorous enough? Your daily grind, money problems, a thousand interruptions, time pressures, may seem less severe than a divorce or loss of a loved one, so you may question if you "qualify" to participate in the sufferings of Christ, or find the meaning in your very real challenges.

Look again at 2 Corinthians 1:3,4. God is not the God of some comfort! He is the God of all comfort. He won't pick and choose which of your troubles are good enough to comfort! As for finding meaning in your suffering: it's clear you are to turn around and share what you learn from your specific kind of suffering with someone else. Each one teach one. You have a destiny: to survive this and help others. There's your future and your hope. Or just a part of it.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 2Cor. 1:3,4