Dry bones.

Unanswered prayer is exhausting.  After years and years of no answer to the same plea, I decided that it was either too big or too insignificant for God. Hope is painful when you're being ignored, so I stopped praying.  I scrambled for a workable narrative, a framework that contained all my conflicting beliefs that wouldn't collapse; but I had become old, dry bones, fallen along with faith into the dust.

God asked Ezekiel, "Can these bones become living people again?"

Nah.  I was done.

Life had become a soul-grinding act of willful steps with no particular goal but to keep moving because there wasn't a viable alternative.  I would simply live for a semblance of earthly comfort.  Something, please.  A moment of blissful ignorance, a short reprieve--always of course with the knowledge that this would be as good as it gets.

I'm reminded of those plastic holders for 6-packs of pop that get yanked off so the cans are freed, and then get tossed into the trash.  Eventually they make their way into the ocean and become deadly collars around the necks and wings and fins of sea animals.  There they remain forever because animals don't have hands and plastic doesn't dissolve, slowly strangling the life out of the poor hapless head that has floated into its noose.  Unless it's rescued by someone with scissors, the only thing it has to look forward to is wiggling around a little to relieve the pressure and hopefully forget for a moment the inevitable.

I was driving down Main Street yesterday and for the hundredth time I was stabbed with guilt because my friend's mother had died while I was away and I had never contacted her because I was too busy tending my own wounds.  I went by her street several times a day and tried my best to push away the conviction that I was the worst friend ever--knowing that I was the worst friend ever.
The silence from her end of town was a resounding clap of guilt.  I knew I had added to her sadness the realization that I--her friend--was selfish and uncaring.  Suddenly my heart broke open in an anguished prayer of  pleading for her, and contrition over how I had increased her burden.  It was short and in the universe of billions of prayers, it was a small prayer.

My phone blipped.  My screen flashed.

It was a response to an ad I had placed in our neighborhood sale site to get rid of 3 over-the-door towel hooks that I had bought for our new house, but couldn't use.  Our  doors are 9-feet tall and I couldn't reach the hooks unless I got on a step-stool--and I mentioned that fact in my ad.
  
My friend, her husband, and their two children are unusually tall.  Like as in, wow, these people are really tall.  My remarks made her laugh at the thought of me needing a ladder just to reach my bath towel, and so she decided to "like" it.

Glory.

My hand fumbled for the phone and it fell into the crack between the car seat and console--the car's favorite black hole.  Ha.  Oh no, you're not stopping me.  My knuckles got scraped when I crammed my hand into the space, trying to fish out my phone, but I was oblivious. I knew that when I picked up that thing my friend would be there.

Now, unbelieving soul, suspend incredulity for just a few minutes and listen to me:  DISbelief can call it random, but in this case the rational mind is invited to see a hand, one wielding scissors, that with a quick and painless snip, released my soul--bam--and allowed life to flow again into my dry, dead bones.

Just like in Ezekiel's field, God said,

"Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord!  Look! I am going to put breath into you and make you alive again!  I will put flesh and muscles on you and cover you with skin.  I will put breath into you, and you will come to life.  Then you will know that I am the LORD.

There was a rattling noise all across the valley.  The bones of each body came together and attached themselves as complete skeletons.  Then as I watched, muscles and flesh formed over the bones.  Then skin formed to cover the bodies, but they still had no breath in them...This is what the Sovereign Lord says:

Come, O breath from the four winds!  Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again...breath came into their bodies.  They all came to life and stood on their feet--a great army."

That's what it took.  It took the dismantling of my skeleton to recognize the healing breath of God.  For my faith it was required first to experience a deep, dark unbelief.   That seems to be God's way, and to some it may seem cruel, but ask that drowning sea turtle, unwrapped from a sea of garbage, that dolphin liberated from the fisher's nets, whether the joy of freedom is deepened and intensified because it was preceded by being hopelessly trapped.  No one is more grateful for new life, more joyous, more devoted to their rescuer than those newly formed bodies.

They turn to the source of renewed life and follow after forever, because they have come back from the dead, are standing upright on their feet, an army, a multitude of dried and reconstituted souls.