Dem Bones....

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Today we sang Elevation Church's song Rattle!  in worship.  It stirred up all kinds of things in me.

See...there's a lot going on IN me right now. I'm in a changing season, and, like any season of change, my footing feels uncertain, my direction is not clear, and I'm looking at old dreams thinking their time has passed...which makes me grieve a bit.  I was so looking forward to seeing those dreams happen.  But...if they are, they are not going to look anything like I thought.

So we are singing about dry bones coming back to life.  To be honest, I struggled.  I just wasn't feeling it.  So I had a little conversation with Holy Spirit about what was going on.  

While I'm singing, you understand.  Does that happen to anyone else?

What I heard was ...the song is about dry bones.  To quote Ezekiel, very dry bones.  And what the Spirit told me was...your bones still have meat on them.  Old, decaying, smelly meat.  You gotta let it die and fall off.  The bones have to be dry.

That's not to say there's anything bad about what was there.  Or what it accomplished.  Or negating the focus and training that working toward the dream accomplished in its time.  But...the old and the past-its-prime has got to drop away to clear the way for the new and the strong and the vibrant.  The bones get bleached out.  Dry isn't just dry...it's also clean.  Rotting meat attracts flies and repels people;  dry bones do not.

I have been thinking a lot about John the Baptist lately; probably a bit because season 3 of The Chosen is about to start up and, according to the chronology in the synoptic gospels, we are going to lose John the Baptizer in this season. I did a little character study of John back in the Desert series;  my thinking has been along those lines, but especially thinking about those guys who were disciples of John....how they had to make the transition from the ministry of John to the ministry of Jesus, who seemed to come along and push aside their rabbi.   I'm sure it was more than a little tempting to resent Jesus and his disciples for supplanting the ministry of John. Everybody is going over to that guy you baptized, they told him.

John's ministry was good, necessary, and part of the prophesied coming of the Messiah. He was in the progression of ministry of national prophets that had gone back centuries.  But it was done.

This is the sound of dry bones rattling...

Not done.  Transforming.  Into following the one that John and all the prophets before him proclaimed.  Into the thing it was intended to be all along.

But the old has to dry up.

SO I began to sing the song as a declaration that when all the old stuff had fallen off and the dreams were truly down to dry bones...the resurrection will come.  In some way, it will come.

Just ask the stone that was rolled at the tomb of the garden what happens when God says to move...

I'm not there yet.  But I can believe it's coming.