dry bones gonna dance again

I keep coming back to Ezekiel 37 lately. Whenever I open my bible, I turn there immediately. it amazes me - prophecy: instead of just saying it Himself, God says to some wayward fellow, "Hey, can you tell that guy this?" He gives us tasks and builds our confidence. God has so much confidence in His own work through us. How blessed are we to be used of our Father for good works.

The other thing about Ezekiel 37 is the process by which God brings the bones back to life. The imagery is stunning, but the process is similar to creation at the start. First, He makes the bones come back together, organized into skeletons. Then, the flesh grows up onto the bones, but there is still no breath in them. They are corpses lying around on the ground, where a few moments before there were only dry bones. Finally, God tells Ezekiel to call the breath from the four winds, into the bodies. The air fills up their lungs, lifts the now-people up from the ground, stands them on their feet - imagine the sound of "an exceedingly great army" choking on new breath, new blood pulsing in their veins. Their eyeballs creaked in their sockets until the tears rushed out of ducts that had been dry.

These dry bones could do nothing on their own. They had to rely completely on the father, not only for sustenance, but for life itself! "This is the whole house of Israel" - they had been saying, "we are ruined! We are but dry bones, our lineage is cut off!" It is the people themselves who were saying, "we're screwed up! we're through! it's over!" And God comes around, as usual, and says, "wait I have a better idea." He puts us back together and gives us new life.

Sometimes decaying things have to die completely before they can live again.

We humans must submit our own plans and expectations into that greater story. We are part of it whether we wish to be, or not. Why not make the best of it, and allow Our Father to direct our steps? He works in our best interests anyway.