It is simply a lovely day in Little Egypt. This morning I read Ezekiel’s account of the Dry Bones. The prophecy was addressed to Israel but is also applicable to us today. I customarily read a scripture passage that I have been asked to read publically a few times to ensure that I can get through it without messing it up too terribly and to feel the writer’s expression. Indeed, the concept of the Spirit of God breathing life into Dry Bones has applied to my Christian Walk on many occasions. On the few occasions that I am asked to read a passage I am cognizant of my human voice and poor skills of reading will be little more than sounding brass and tinkling cymbals unless God’s Spirit breaths life into the words. Twenty-five years ago when MJ and Aaron and Jonathon and I began attending First Presbyterian Church in Carbondale I loved hearing Pastor Judy Beyler read scripture. Each time that she read a passage the words became life to me and I could visualize what the writer was speaking of.

Life can be a bit tedious if God’s spirit does not quicken us from time to time. As we go about our daily routine and that is including our Christian Walk…we can feel the sameness of what we have been doing for many years. However, with a Breath from our Creator, we suddenly are able to see through the veil and discover the wonder of what life is and our magical part in it! Dry Bones can apply to individuals and peoples…such as the Israelites…and churches that have looked so long for the secret and the revealing…that they have forgotten what it is like to see the Burning Bush and feel the majesty of following Christ and his benevolent teachings.

What a difference ‘They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,’ the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.’ Jesus spit on the ground and made the mud poultice for the blind man’s eyes and he was not troubled that it was the Sabbath… In an instant, the blind man was in a new world and the religious restrictions of the day did not impede a miracle for him.

May God grant us the courage to step out of our comfort zone and receive a Breath on our Dry Bones…