I have never experienced the horror of the battlefield.  I have
been blessed to have been born in a time of relative peace and in a
land that has known peace and security within it’s borders.  I can’t
begin to understand the carnage of war and the devastation of a
battlefield.

    But I have read the accounts of those who have.  In many cases the
horror of the devastation left those witnesses choking on words in a
vain attempt to describe the indescribable.

    A fifth century Roman historian described the scene of a Roman city
that had been sacked by the armies of Attila the Hun.

    I know a man who went to Rwanda recently with a ministry team.
Their goal was to facilitate healing and reconciliation among the
survivors of that terrible holocaust.  He told me that he has never
experienced anything that could compare with the emotional stress he
encountered hearing the accounts of survivors and visiting sites of
mass graves and massacre memorials.

    I can’t imagine how I would cope if I found myself standing in the
midst of a town square where the stench of death so permeated the still
air that I could almost feel it penetrating my skin.

    I don’t know how I would deal with the experience of walking down a
shattered city street ankle deep in the mud of pulverized flesh.

    I don’t know how I could keep from emotional collapse standing in a
room full of bones and having my gaze fall upon a skull no bigger than
my hand that bore the deeply embedded evidence of the machete’s deadly
work.

    If you  were to come face to face with such terrible scenes you
might feel the same things as those who have.  You might feel like
despair could overtake you and that your life itself may succumb to the
horror and grief of that moment.

    So what kind of cruel joke is God playing on Ezekiel to take him to
a place of such devastation and "cause him to pass among them round
about"?

    The sanitized Sunday School version of the story has the prophet
watching cartoon skeletons dancing around as the "right bone is
connected to the left bone".

    But what if it was a real valley of dry bones?  What if God had the
prophet get down and dirty in the midst of such an awful, place picking
his way gingerly through those ghastly remains?

    Did Ezekiel see signs of the sword’s deadly contact as he wandered
through the skulls and severed limbs?  Did he see the jagged evidence
of bones snapped and crushed like shattered branches after a storm?

    What kind of heartless trick is this that would cause the living to
pass through such a spectacle of death?

    What kind of twisted humor is it that would turn to one sick with
the revulsion of slaughter and ask a question like; "Son of man,
can these bones live?"

    One has to marvel at the answer of a man standing in the midst of
such hopelessness;  "Oh Lord…You know."

    Of course we understand that the whole scene was a vision.  But we
would be glib to assume that it was a vision that beheld anything short
of the full measure of the ghastly scale of a real field of slaughter.

    Why would God pull so violently on the prophet’s emotional
strings?  Was God getting some cheap thrill watching the man’s stomach
convulse with nauseous pain?

    Or could it be that God was (is) trying to make a point about the
very essence of hopelessness itself?  Is He addressing the kind of
hopelessness that creeps into our lives when we encounter situations
and circumstances that threaten to completely snuff out our last
flicker of faith?

    What can be more devastating than witnessing your family fractured
by dysfunction?

    What can be more hopeless than seeing the hollow eyes of the living
dead…….those who have no knowledge of God and who have been broken
and tempered hard by the cruelty of religion?

    What can be more desperate than feeling the weight of the pressing
darkness over communities, regions and nations?

    What could be more lethal to hope than these things?

    Perhaps only a valley polluted with the remains of the slain.  As a
metaphor of hopelessness, there are not many images more devastatingly
effective.

    So the prophet with chin quivering, fighting back the tears and
choking on his words replies;  "Oh Lord!  You know."

    And perhaps the Lord does know.  Maybe He does know what is
truly hopeless…….and what only appears overwhelmingly hopeless.

    Maybe God has what it takes to see through the spectacle of massive
destruction and behold the place where hope still stands.

    "Prophesy over these bones and say to them…….Oh dry
bones……."
    Oh you fruit of destruction…….
    Oh you the gorging of the grave…….

    "Hear the Word of the Lord!
    I WILL cause breath to enter you that you may LIVE!
    …….and you WILL know that I Am the Lord!"

    Oh lost child…….hear the WORD of the Lord……."I will
cause breath to enter you and you will LIVE!  And you will know that I
Am God!"

    What situation is more hopeless than the valley of dry bones?

    What place is darker?

    What individual is more lifeless than those among the slain?

    The Lord of Hope would say;