"Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones..."

I know Sunday is Pentecost and that the lectionary has Ezekiel as only an alternative reading for the day but I find it particularly appropriate. Maybe because I'm feeling a little bit dry right now or maybe because I just love this passage - Ezekiel 37:1-14. The title of this post might more appropriately be "The Desert Places of Our Lives.”

There are times in our lives when we feel drained, empty, and uninspired; just down right dry - no energy, no creativity. When these times come to us, they touch every part of our lives – work, the relationship with our spouse or significant other, the relationships with our children, and even with our friends. It is as if we are in a desert searching for water to quench our thirst yet there is none to be found. Unfortunately, it seems that the more earnestly we search the drier we become. Or, we think we have finally found water to renew us only to discover that it was a mirage and the sand that we have imagined to be water only dries us more.

How do these times occur? Why do they come? Perhaps because we overextend ourselves; get our priorities out of order; remain absent from the presence of God for too long. There's more that we could say to answer those questions. From my own experiences, and I suspect you could do the same, I can more easily describe what those moments are like than tell you precisely why or how they arrived. In these moments, I can set the pen to paper yet no words will flow onto the paper. Or, I can sit with someone who is hurting, yet not know what to say or do even if saying or doing nothing is the appropriate response. Or, I can be present with a group, all the while feeling out of the group and unable to participate. In these moments, it is as if I am a collection of dry bones lying upon the ground.

Ezekiel knows of this feeling. He sees it among his brothers and sisters in exile. They feel emptied out, drained of hope by the situation. Their land had been taken, their temple destroyed, and now they reside in a land far from home. They lack any hope of restoration to the land God had promised their ancestors. As each day passed and they left their new homes to go and work for the Babylonians and then the Persians, they must have felt as if they were trapped in a desert without water. They were a collection of dry bones lying lifelessly upon the ground.

But in the midst of this desert, God speaks a word of hope through the prophet Ezekiel. In a vision, God comes to this prophet and shows him a valley full of dry bones. It sounds like scene of battlefield slaughter to me - maybe it is like the Brady photographs of civil war battlefields. In the midst of this carnage and absence of life, God gives to Ezekiel a command. The prophet is to call, through the gift of God’s spirit, the bones back to life. God says to the prophet that bone will come together with bone, sinews will cover the bones, the skin will again cover both, and the breath of life will again fill the lungs of these dry bones brought to life. Ezekiel does so and it comes to pass before his eyes. He calls the Spirit of God to come from the four winds to bring life back to the dry bones.

If you were to hear this story read in Hebrew, you would hear a word repeated 10 times throughout the story. The word is ruah and it can be translated spirit, breath, and wind. It is the spirit that carries Ezekiel into the valley and sets him down there. It is the breath that God breathes into the dry bones. It is the four winds that Ezekiel summons to bring the life-giving breath. With one word, the poet ties the story together.

Now, you might say, “I can see how it ties the story together. But what does it matter?” I call your attention to this repetitive use of ruah because this story from Ezekiel is a reenactment of creation. It is God’s ruah that passes over the waters and it is God’s ruah that breathes life into the creatures formed from the earth. And, it is God’s ruah that brings life out of death.

In our lives when we are in the midst of the desert feeling as if we are nothing but a collection of dry bones, it is God’s ruah that fills us with life. The more that we search for water to quench the dryness of our thirst, the drier we become. But when God’s ruah breathes into us, life returns.

What are the desert places of your life? Where does God's ruah need to blow through your life?