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Excerpt from The Breath in the Winds: And Other Sermons
We begin our inquiry, then, at the beginning. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones. It is not a prepossessing audience, this congregation of bones that God addresses. But bones are no obstacle to the bone-maker. Having originally organized carbonate, phosphate, and gelatin into bones, may not even ¿eshless bones hear the word of the Lord? For Ezekiel is saying that within and behind all desolation is the living God. And is not this what we want to know, what we must know, if we are to keep our souls alive? Let a man be perfectly sure of God, and he can release his hold upon everything else without being ut terly confounded; on the other hand, let h' grasp everything else very tenaciously, with no certain grip upon God, and he is the victim of terrible confusion. It is so of Ezekiel's day; it is so of Paul's day; it is so of our day; it is so of all days.
Now the way in which the prophet asserts this truth is original, instructive, inspiring. In one aspect, he paints a picture of starkest realism. In his mind's eye, Israel represents desolation in carnate, despair in cerements, death unco¿ined. Search as you may, you will find no gleam, no softening hues, only jagged, ragged patches of gray waste. For, mark you, he does not reveal a graveyard, with its orderly graves and quiet walks and decently buried bones. He shows us, if I may so express it, a graveyard turned upside down, the disjointed bones scattered everywhere. In this black valley of death the bones are many and very dry. Scavengers have done their work - sinews are gone, ¿esh is gone, skin is gone. This, then, is Ezekiel's picture - not mine nor any other man's; but it is not the whole picture.
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