September 2nd 2012

September 2, 2012

Ezekiel 37-39

It was really hard for me to figure out what I wanted to write about for today's reading because there are so many things I could have potentially focused on. But because today starts and ends with restorations of some kind, I'd like to focus on that idea.

The first restoration is in the vision of dry bones. The people Ezekiel is trying to save are lifeless. God mentions that they start off as bones, and Ezekiel sees them that way when speaking to them. He notices their lack of life and hopes for a future where these empty shells of people will be full again. This type of restoration is a spiritual one, and every single Christian in the world has been through a spiritual remodeling at one point in life. There are always low points in life, and usually the most spiritual change happens when we are at our lowest. When we hit that bottom, we may linger there for a while because at that moment it seems physically impossible to pick ourselves back up. But then God sends us some kind of crutch, something to not only get us standing upright but also something to lean on until we're ready to stand alone, almost like a spiritual scaffolding. This crutch comes in many different forms, be it a friend, a family member, or it could even be something as small as an idea, but more often then not this one thing sticks with you. It gives you hope, and hope leads to faith, and that is all that God asks of you.

The second restoration is when God promises to restore the people to their homeland. But this homeland is dirty from all the fighting, so there will be a team sent out to give proper burials to all the fallen men, and also to ritually cleanse the land. Then the rebuilding of the nation will begin. This type of restoration is physical, and is just as important as a spiritual restoration. You can have a beautifully vivid spirit with a strong faith, but without the proper tools and resources that's as far as your faith train goes. Without the proper tools, we would be keeping our beautiful faith to ourselves when we really should be out sharing our faith and helping restore others people's faith. To go out and spread our faith, we need to be healthy. If we are unhealthy, it would be really hard to go out and help build a nation for God. We need to be restored physically to be able to help others restore both physically and spiritually.

While it is completely true that neither kind of restoration could even begin without the grace of God, He shouldn't have to do all the work. To truly restore ourselves, we need to meet God half way. He can provide us with the crutch to walk with, but it is our responsibility to move our feet.

Hope you all are having a great Labor Day weekend!

Gina :)