Excerpt from Ezekiel 37:1-14
"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...I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude."
Reflection by Quinn G. Caldwell
Here's what the story says: dry bones are not the final state of things. Death will not win. Here's what it says: life wins.
Here's what it doesn't say: that they were human bones. Or that those bones went back together in their original order. Or that the bodies at the end were the same as the bodies in the beginning.
We tell this story as if it's only about humans, as if we're the only species God loves enough to waste the energy on. But this is the God that notes the fall of every sparrow, right? Surely God noted the fall of every pterodactyl. Surely, God noticed the fate of the hominid Australopithecus afarensis just as fully as he does that of the hominid Homo sapiens.
99% of all the different species that once lived are now extinct. And yet, the place is full of life. Why? Because God does not let extinction win. The dinosaurs go down to bones and molecules, and the mammals rise up to take their place. Homo habilis goes extinct, and up rises Homo sapiens. One very particular Homo sapiens goes down to dust, and rises up the King of Heaven.
Death happens, but so does resurrection. Extinction happens, but so does evolution. And if our bones fit together differently when we walk out of the valley than when we walked in, maybe that's not so bad. I mean, you're better looking than Paranthropus boisei any day.
Prayer
For evolution, thank you. For resurrection, thank you. For not giving me a protruding brow ridge and shallow brain pan, thank you, thank you, thank you. Amen.
From UCC STILL SPEAKING Devotional today's date
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PLAY
Dem Bones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnhJ3IkLQ7s
