[re]imagine Lent: 3/22/2023
We encourage you to sign up for the 40-40-40 Lenten Challenge, a challenge with our partner Southeastern Iowa Synod to participate in Lenten practices, including these daily devotions. Just signing up counts as participation! More info here.
“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. God led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. God said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.””
Back in the days of the pandemic when I had a little more time to sit at home and watch TV, I found myself drawn to a show called “Good Bones,” a show about a mother/daughter duo who buys dilapidated houses with ‘good bones’ and rehabs them – transforms them – into beautiful places for others to make a home.
I think about that metaphor a lot these days – about the bones of our world. I think about how very many things seem dried up, dilapidated, and just not working: the inequities in so many of our systems (healthcare, criminal justice, economic inequality, etc.); addressing predicted catastrophic impacts of climate change[1]; the economic uncertainty as banks fail and wars rage; untenable schedules of work, activities, and the many places vying for volunteer hours… it seems that I often am just looking at a valley of ‘dry bones’ and I find myself dried up and wondering, ‘can these bones live?’ It was the same question always addressed at the beginning of each episode of “Good Bones,” and the thing that was most fun for me to see was how each project used the bones of the old to create something totally different. Each home was almost entirely gutted. Nothing left but the bones and possibility.
As you ponder the decaying bones of faults and failures, and the dry bones of things that once were, this question is alive and well. Can these bones live? And of course, in the promise of resurrection life, God sees: good bones, stripped bare, with nothing left but possibility.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/03/20/1162711459/cut-emissions-quickly-to-save-lives-scientists-warn-in-a-new-u-n-report
Prayer
God, help me to see with ready and willing eyes what it is that you see. Help my sight turn into belief, and turn my belief into action, that following your vision for a world of mercy, peace, and love, I might follow where you lead, through the messiness of death, to the everlasting light of your resurrection dawn. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Journal Prompt
We, humans, are constantly casting visions: how we want our life to look in 3, 5, or 20 years. How our companies can impact the world. How our congregation can best live into its mission. Yet how often do we allow God to shift or change that vision? Do we ever stop to wonder if God has something in store that we haven’t even imagined?
This week I invite you to think about your life, your work, or your congregation. How do you listen for God’s vision? How do you know if your current trajectory aligns with that vision? What has felt extra messy or difficult, and might that be God’s Spirit at work?
Week Four Devotions by Rev. Erika Uthe, uthe@seiasynod.org