Weary to the Bone

All those dry, scattered bones coming back together and standing on their feet, alive. Whoa! How did that happen?!

Imagine it: you are whisked away to a dry desert valley and surrounded by the bones of your people picked clean by animals and insects and scorched by the sun. And the question came to you, "Can these bones live?" Your immediate response would be No.

But in Ezekiel's vision, after he is asked the same question and answers, "O Lord God, you know," the bones start moving and coming together with an eerie rattling sound. Pretty soon they have sinews connecting them and flesh covering them, but they are just lying there, until the breath of life is breathed into them, and suddenly they are on their feet, alive!

"O Mortal, can these bones live?" No - but then they do! How did life come to these dry bones? We see it all through the passage. Life comes into these dry bones through the spoken word of God: the speaking of God to the dry bones, the speaking of God through the prophet.

In the beginning when the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, God said, "Let there be..." and there was. God's speech. Life springing "fresh from the Word."

It happened to Jesus' good friend, Lazarus, who had been dead for four days. Jesus went to the entrance of his tomb-cave and told them to roll back the stone. He cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" And "the dead man came out" (Jn. 11:17-43). The Word of God speaks and the miracle of life comes forth.

And the opposite is true too. When we are cut off from God's word, life is lost. It can no longer be sustained.

Ezekiel is speaking to a people in exile, and he is in exile with them in what is now Iraq. God's people have been carried away from their homeland by the powerful nation of Babylon. They can no longer go to Jerusalem and the temple to worship because the city and the temple and the whole nation have been destroyed.

They know exactly why this has happened. It's not just because Babylon overpowered them; it is because they turned away from the living God. The unraveling of their lives with its loud lamentation was their own fault. They had ceased living by God's word and were listening to the voices of lesser gods, and it was their undoing, literally.

You know what? I don't think they did it intentionally. I don't think they said, "We aren't going to listen to God's word to Moses, our Torah, our scriptures, anymore." But over time, perhaps imperceptibly, slowly but surely, their daily practices changed. They were no longer listening to God.

Eventually the leaders, the priests, the prophets, and the whole people weren't tuned into God's word anymore. They said they were; maybe they even thought they were. But their connection with God got lost and their lives began to look just like everybody else around them who did not worship God. They became lost and cut off from the Source of life, dry bones, graves, one imperceptible step at a time. That's usually the way it happens to most of us.

Mike Yaconelli, before he died, lived in a small, rural community up in Northern California where there are a lot of cattle ranches, and he noticed how cows would wander off and get lost.

Yaconelli said we are just like that. We nibble our way into lostness, moving from one tuft of green grass, one tuft of activity to another, never noticing how far we have gone from home or how far away from the truth we have managed to end up. "Like sheep," Isaiah says (53:6), "we have all gone astray; each of us has turned to his or her own way." Away from God's life-giving and life-sustaining word - not intentionally, over time, other tufts of grass, good things, slowly but surely draw us away.

You are invited to a baby shower. Your child is invited to a birthday party on Sunday morning. It's a special occasion; no harm in missing church that day.

Your child made it onto a higher level soccer team and a lot of the games are on Sundays, many of them out of town. But it won't last all year, just during soccer season.

Your work schedule has you working on weekends; you are on the road a lot. It comes with the job, not much you can do. You fly out on Sundays to be ready for work on Monday. You don't like missing worship or your small group; you'll get there when you can.

You have a time share available to you for a couple of weeks and then a wedding down south. You are grateful for the flexibility in your schedule to travel and see the world and so you take advantage of it whenever you can.

Good things! A green tuft of grass, and then another, and another. You don't intentionally choose to be cut off from God's word, but slowly, imperceptibly it happens, this gradual movement away from the Source of life. And we don't even realize how far away we are until the dryness of our lives begins to show.

Madeline Levine is a psychologist who has been treating teens for over 25 years. Our Program Staff read an excerpt from her bestselling book, "The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Deeply Unhappy Kids." I want to read to you one paragraph from this excerpt:

In her book Levine is not writing about the "usual suspects" of troubled teens at risk. She is writing about high achievers from highly resourced families who give them everything. On the outside they don't look like they are troubled kids at all, but underneath it all they are EMPTY.

Our Program Staff interviewed civic leaders in San Carlos recently, and one of the common themes that came up was concern for our children: their over-extended lives, the pressure on them to achieve and get into the top colleges, the lack of down time just to be kids. Probably the same concerns you have.

Last week there was a workshop here in town led by a licensed clinical social worker (also a San Carlos parent) titled: "The Over-Scheduled Family: Finding Balance in an Ever-Demanding World." She told these parents:

It is an alarming trend. What do we read? What do we do when we are already too busy to add one more thing?

"Can these bones live?" "O Lord God, you know."

In the exile of our undoing, nibbling ourselves into lives we did not intend, far away from the Source of Life, listening to lesser gods, living lives that look like those who do not worship God, it is the speaking of God that restores us to life. It is the word of God that brings revival to dry and weary and empty lives.

So let me ask you a few related questions. Where is that bible you were given so long ago, maybe third grade, or that bible you bought and haven't been reading as much as you intended? What about starting a bible story time before bed; let your children or grand-children or God-children read their bibles to you. (More and more when people come to me worried about their grown children and grandchildren, I encourage them to read scripture with them somehow.) Find a way to be in God's word together.

And how dispensable is worship and bible study? When you are faced with choices every week about your schedule and your children's schedule, and you have to decide whether or not you will worship here or somewhere else or bring them to Sunday School, check yourself. Are you nibbling yourself away from the word of God? Jesus said (Jn. 15:5, 7):

In the Reformed tradition we have always believed that our life and our formation as followers of Jesus Christ are absolutely dependent on "rigorous bible learning" (Darrell Guder)², i.e. constant immersion in the word of God.

Ezekiel knew this firsthand: people who are cut off from God's word are as good as dead; people who live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God are given the miracle of new life.

Years ago Presbyterian pastor Darrell Guder was working with a group of Lutheran students in northern Germany, and he took them to the Protestant monastic community in Taize, France where there is a revival going on among young adults. For two weeks his students lived with this community, and they entered fully into their monastic life of service and bible study and worship, practices that oriented their lives in Christ. It had a huge impact on the German visitors.

On the ride home they were having this lively discussion in the back of the bus, and the students asked Guder to join them. What they had seen and experienced in Taize was strikingly different than what they experienced at home in Germany, and they said, "We need to spend more time studying the Bible, finding out what it means to be a Christian, and acting like a Christian community. Can we do that? Would you mind?" ³

I can just imagine the look on Guder's face. This is what resurrects and transforms lives and communities: not just "snacking" on the word now and then when your schedule allows it (Kevin Harney's words), but "feasting" on it regularly in your home, in your small group, in Christian community.

Ezekiel saw the same dry bones we are seeing: people cut off from the Word of Life, in Babylon and among his own people, dryness and separation and emptiness and death, even among outwardly successful people.

"Can these bones live?" "O Lord God, you know."

Jesus is calling to us in our graves of emptiness, "Come out!" Apart from him we won't; we will just keep nibbling ourselves into lostness. But if we listen to him, and if we keep listening to him, and if we build our lives around listening to him, God promises: "I will raise you up from your graves, O my people."