Breath for Dry Bones

Breath for Dry Bones – This Service of the Longest Night is designed to hold space and a quiet place for those who are suffering loss or other distress. Delivering the sermon is Tammy Lewis Wilborn, our Pastoral Intern, and the text is Ezekiel’s well-known vision of the valley of dry bones. She compares much of today’s situations to that valley in that we are alive but not living, trying to navigate the loss of a loved one, or a dead relationship (with people or with one’s own spirit), or dead dreams where one’s dreams are not being fulfilled. In Ezekiel’s vision, God asks him whether the dry bones can live, and the prophet replies, “O Sovereign Lord, only you know.” Then God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones, and that enlivens them. If we focus our minds on the things that are life-giving, we are accepting God’s direction that we have a response-ability to respond to God’s plans for us, and through a God-directed word we, too, can enliven what has seemed to be dead. God does what we can’t do, but God does not do what we won’t do – we have a part in life and the living.