One of the symptoms I struggle with is dryness – most specifically in my eyes and skin. The only way to keep them hydrated is with medication – something external, rather than the internal working of my body. It makes life uncomfortable. So I can have some kind of empathy with the reading from Ezekiel.
The bones in this valley are dry -very dry. All life has gone from them, and been gone for a long while. I imagine it kind of like the elephant graveyard in the Lion King!! The question put to Ezekiel is ‘Can the bones come back to life?’ The obvious answer would seem to be that if they are that dried up then they are beyond any hope or use – but God has other ideas. It might appear that there is no future for the bones – but God gives them a future. He puts his breath, his life, into them – and they live again. Nothing is beyond the reach of God’s hope.
This is reiterated by Paul: By hope we are saved – God’s hope in us. Everything may feel withered and dried up. Our lives may feel dead and gone – but the hope of God lives on.
God promises to put his spirit in his people, that they might live again. And this is what happens on the day of Pentecost – there is re-born the possibility that everyone – men, women, young, old, people from every nation and language will hear God’s message, and receive again his life and hope. Jesus promised that the helper would come – and he has.
So however awful and beyond hope things feel, God pours his hope into them. Wherever we are in our life, our church, our nation, our world – there is always hope with God. That can sound very glib and easy to say, but it is true. From our place of dryness, we can know God’s touch of hope. There may be nothing we can do ourselves, but God can, and does bring hope to the hopeless, life to the dead. Jesus has physically gone from the world, but his presence remains with us now.
