The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37:1-6, NRSVue)
Our way through the wilderness takes us this week from an earthbound geographical location to a visionary landscape of devastation and decay. As we read in this first person narrative from the Prophet Ezekiel in the Hebrew Scriptures, he was carried by "the spirit of the Lord" into a valley, ghoulishly heaped with scattered, desiccated human bones, symbolizing the Jewish people after their nation had been destroyed and they were taken into exile by the Babylonians. What begins as a vista of utter desolation suddenly flips into a startling image of the national and spiritual restoration of Israel as the scattered skeletons are knitted together, enfleshed, and given the breath of life at the command of God issued by the Prophet. Ohio-based Artist Cody F. Miller captures this miraculous moment in a painted collage, depicting the return of life to a mountain of skulls with both wind and fire, bringing to mind the descent of the Holy Spirit on the first followers of Christ at Pentecost. (John Kohan)