Ezekiel 37:3
“He asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ I said, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’”
A coffin lies at the altar for a funeral that has been ongoing for the last 35 years. Each day, the living come and pay their respects to the rotten corpse, dressed in black and weeping tears that flow in uninterrupted streams. They pray ceaselessly with murmuring lips, then return to their homes to eat, drink, laugh and converse.
On a beautiful spring afternoon a thought formed in the mind of the moldering corpse. This was, of course, impossible, but he did not recognize the impossibility of the situation until much later.
So… thirsty, he thought, longing for a drink of pure, cold water.
He had no cause to drink, no capacity to benefit from it, but the thought entered his mind from seemingly nowhere before his conscious mind faded to blackness and emptiness.
Weeks passed.
The congregation came and went each day, their shoes wet with the dew of the morning.
The thought formed again.
I need… water.
The bones ached, feeling their own dryness and deadness and longing to press against the dark, suffocating space of the coffin.
But there was no power in those bones. No strength came from longing.
Death held tight with an iron grip.
The days went by as before, the congregation praying with tearful eyes and singing songs of deliverance.
The corpse longed to sing with them, but soon remembered he had no tongue, no ability to move the jaw and no breath in his lungs.
Dead! Dead! He thought. There is no hope, no rest for me here. And now that I understand my own predicament, I am worse off than I was before!
The song finished and the congregation filed out of the room, leaving only stillness and the echoes of their voices.
If I could only have a little water… I am in agony in this casket.
The moment passed with a torturous slowness. The walls seemed to press in as if the coffin was shrinking. He was desperate to scream out, to throw his fist against the locked lid until it splintered.
But no movement and no sound came from the casket. The corpse lay still, thinking loud, desperate thoughts.
Am I to be here forever? I cannot spend another 35 years in this box! Lord, save me from this body of death! I have nothing to bring but rottenness and sin… I cast my wretchedness on the blood of the Lamb!
Pain, and then relief coursed through his tortured mind.
He felt his heart beating wildly, an alien sensation that was frightening at first.
Warm blood flowed through lifeless, dried-out limbs.
As someone coming up from the depths of the water, he gasped an enormous breath, pulling air into his lungs for the first time.
Click.
The lock! He thought, finding that his lips were mouthing the words.
His fingers twitched as muscle and sinew wrapped and stretched themselves across his arms, then his legs. New skin covered his new body like a garment, flowing over him from head to foot.
With a shout he brought both hands up and pushed. The lid of the coffin clattered onto the floor as blinding light shone into his newly formed, blinking eyes.
He soon found himself standing at the altar, looking around at the shapes and colors of the world like a newborn infant. His suit pants, which were fitted for a man lying down, were a bit long now that he was standing.
He staggered down the aisle to the door awkwardly, singing the songs he had heard in the depths of the coffin.
“Thank you! But thank you is not enough! What words can describe this!” he exclaimed as he looked back toward the altar.
Opening the door, he saw a well lying by the path that led to the church.
He drew up a bucket and drank deeply of the water there for the first time, not realizing in this moment that he would be able to return to this very spot the next day, and every day afterward for the rest of his life.
After drinking long and deep, he looked down the path and saw the congregants walking in the distance some miles away. He began running after them, singing again as his legs grew in strength and speed.
“Once I was dead in sin,
And hope within me died;
But now I’m dead to sin,
With Christ I’m crucified.
O height I cannot reach!
O depth I cannot sound!
O love, O boundless love,
In my Redeemer found!
I live—and yet not I,
But Christ that lives in me,
Who from the law of sin
And death has made me free.”
