Everything Made New
The rattling of bones... The rustling of leaves… The clanking of wood against chimes…
Tonight is one of the coldest and windiest nights of the year. Our home is locked tight, doors and windows bolted shut, but gusty fingers pry their way into the smallest cracks. The chimes which hang on our front porch play a constant A minor chord, a winter-warning rather than a summer-song.
The leftover leaves, the yellow- and red- and orange-turned-brown, have lost their grips and are tumbling into a wispy maelstrom, miles from home, months from belonging. Yet, despite this chaos, this ordained destruction, in some last conscious effort never perceived by our schedules, our binge-watching, our quest for half-caff, shade-grown, cold brewed espresso, each leaf cries out to return to branch and trunk and root, to feel sun and drink water, to go back to the beginning, when everything was green and full of flowers and fruit.
When everything was new.
I went through a period of about a decade, right after I got into photography for the first time, when I became fascinated by dilapidated buildings, rust, decay, and generally just things that were falling apart. Those places and things always made me want to get out my camera. Looking back on that time in my life, I think my borderline obsession with entropy was because that part of creation–or, rather, the fall of creation–seemed to poetically coincide with what was going on in my heart and mind. (More on that a little later this month.)
I would've stood in the valley with Ezekiel, trying to wax eloquent about the ironic beauty of bones, while the resurrection spirit of God was stirring.
The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”
So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
—The Words of Ezekiel, a Prophet of Israel (NIV)
The bones, they make me wonder, when Christ appears, when his “not-yet” returning collides with his “already” return, will every leaf that ever fell from a tree, ugly and brittle and brown, will they all rise to life again? Will the Spirit of God jump like a child into the countless piles of decomposition and send them flying back into the trees, green as ever? Will they all be made new?
This week began Advent, four weeks1 of preparation for the coming of the Christ, but not only in expectation of Christmas and the newborn Messiah, and not only for us to remember the second coming of Christ—yes, those things, of course–but also the re-incarnation of his spirit, always and forever in us, “unto all those also that love his appearing.” (St. Paul, in his second epistle to Timothy)
The rattling of bones…
The rustling of leaves…
The clanking of wood against chimes…
Each one inanimate until the four winds blow and move our souls.
Excerpt from “Four Winds,” written by Jessie Motley and performed by Jason Leslie Rogers
Oh, Lord, only you know if these dry bones within us can live again. Only your Wind, only your Breath, only your Spirit can heal the wounds that have slain us. Only you, creator God, can make us new again.
Come, Lord Jesus. Come and breathe your resurrection into us so that we will know that you are the Lord. Come, Lord Jesus. Maranatha!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Or, when the calendar happens to do unusual things, 3 1/2 weeks, like this year.
Thank you for this. It's beautiful and just what I need tonight. <3