Amped (Ezekiel 37:1-6)

The hand of Adonai was upon me, and it carried me away by the spirit of Adonai and set me down in a valley – a valley full of bones. God made me walk up and down among them. And I saw that there was a vast number of bones lying there in the valley, and they were very dry. God asked me, “Mere mortal, can these bones live?”

                I answered, “Only you know that, Sovereign Adonai.”

                And God said, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them: ‘Dry bones, hear the word of Adonai! Sovereign Adonai says to these bones: I am going to breathe life into you. I will fasten sinews on you, clothe you with flesh, cover you with skin, and give you breath. And you will live; and you will know that I am Sovereign Adonai.”

Ezekiel 37:1-6



Creative energy abstract digital art image
@ http://www.imagenature.com/
Used by permission

As a queer person of faith, do you ever grow tired? In the midst of the daily struggle for acceptance rest can be nothing more than a diminutive oasis in a vast desert. Worn out, dried up, and half buried by the sands of scorn, our bones lie scattered across the shifting dunes of indifference.

Water cannot revive these bones, nor can bandages knit back together what the vultures of contempt have torn apart. Only the force of life itself can revive what decay has claimed.

For Ezekiel the life giving force of the universe was the word of God - the divine creative energy dancing across the cosmos. Such energy brought into being the thoughts and aspirations of the Sacred.

“Dry bones, hear the word of Adonai!” is an invitation to allow the invasion of these holy energies into our tired lives. It is our opportunity to be infused and reanimated – our opportunity to be revived with the breath of life.

With the creative energy of the Sacred breathed into our weariness we begin to dance. We dance past slights and putdowns realizing they say more about the person who flung them then they say about us. We dance around doorways knowing that opportunities may be granted or withheld but what is of importance is the creative energies within us. We dance across deserts not in search of an oasis or refuge, but to transform the dry and cracked ground into a well watered garden of contentment.

We do not dance alone. We dance within and because of the embrace of the Sacred and other revived lives. Like Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones, we are remade – glorious and whole – as at the first dawn because God has spoken and the divine word resides in us.