This entry is definitely going up late, (so I am sorry to all faithful readers.) This is my second week back in Baltimore and I am happy to report that things are going very well with David Henry. He is a very mellow baby. (likes to sleep).Oren is also loving spending time at his grandparents house. And it is really nice to be here through the fall and holidays. Rebecca and I realized that this will be the last time we see winter for 5 years. When we return to Burundi we will not be home for 2 and a half years (home leave for 2 months), and when we do come back it will almost certainly be in the summer. So we are enjoying the fall with a real appreciation of this country that has these beautiful seasons.
Not much to report from Burundi. I am in regular contact with Zachee who is manning the fort in MCC and he seems to be doing well. He has moved everything to our new office now and is working on getting a decent internet connection.
I am also in regular contact with our partners in Congo. I have not talked about them a lot but we partner with two organizations just across the border in Bukavu. It is very close to Bujumbura but also very close to Goma—the city that has been under siege by General Nkunda’s rebel forces. Congo has been very much on my mind as it has been in the news for the last two weeks—twice on the front page of the New York Times. (see story) The problems there impact us greatly in Rwanda and Burundi as we are experiencing a great spill over of refugees as a result of the fighting. The situation is a tragic mess, and at this time prayer is the only answer I could suggest. (Although it would help if Congo would make more of a commitment to security and law enforcement on it Eastern border.)
The fact that there is a tremendous amount of mineral wealth in the region, really exacerbates the problem. And there are many militias and even government soldiers who are fighting for control of territory and riches, not unlike street gangs fighting for drug trafficking territory.
The real victims are women and children who are raped by the thousands or conscripted into the army. It is truly a reign of lawless terror there. I am including a map of the Great Lakes region of Africa so you can see the area and our proximity to it. (Goma is just above Lake Kivu and Bujumbura is near the top of Lake Tanganyika)
I confess it is strange to be sitting in such a comfortable setting and enjoying the beauty of the season and the loving care of our families and yet feeling strangely restless to return, to the suffering and need, the heat, the bad roads, the challenges of language, but close to brothers and sisters who need us now. I do not feel like I am home here anymore, eventhough I feel embraced and pampered here, my heart is in Central Africa right now. I think we will all be ready to go when it is time. Oren does talk fondly about his friends, and especially his nanny Denise who he really likes. I do pray that David will not be exposed to to much illness in his infancy but there will be some risk of that—particularly malaria.
The reason this blog is so late is that I have done a ton of writing this week. Rebecca and I presented two programs this week, one for my parents’s Baptist Church and one for North Baltimore Mennonite where Rebecca is a member. I did a powerpoint show for the former and a sermon for the latter. I can tell you I spent many hours writing at the computer right through Sunday morning. So that is why this is late. For your interest (and posterity) I am posting the sermon if you want to read it.—If you don’t I won’t be offended. The gist of it is that the causes of poverty are spiritual and not material. It somewhat explains the approach that MCC takes to its development strategy. If you are interested in mission work you might find it interesting.
Imagining a good future:
(Sermon Preached by Paul Mosley at North Baltimore Mennonite Church, 11/16/2008)
Read Ezekiel 37:1-14 The Valley of Dry Bones
I want to begin by saying what an honor it is to be here in this place today to share with you all. My wife Rebecca is a member here, and we have many fond memories of being here in the past. Particularly on July 12, 2003 when we were married.
For those of you who do not know us well, Rebecca and I are Country Representatives for MCC in Rwanda and Burundi. We live there with our son Oren will return in Jan with our new son David as well. This is a new assignment for us, one we began in July of this year. Prior to that I had had a career as a performing artist, dancer and choreographer and was teaching at Vassar College, Rebecca is a graduate of Regent seminary and was working as a pastor of youth ministries in a Methodist Church in Poughkeepsie NY.
Our decision to enter the field of mission and development with MCC as we begin raising a young family can only be explained as an act of faith that came out of our love of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we do trust that his timing is perfect.
Rebecca and I will be sharing the pulpit today, I will be laying the groundwork and she will be relating some stories from our experiences in Rwanda and Burundi that illustrate our points.
Let me speak a moment to our selection of the passage this morning. The Ezekiel passage was put on my heart very shortly after our arrival in Burundi. We took a trip up to Rwanda and stopped at a genocide memorial where the skeletal remains of over 9000 people are kept in a church where they were slaughtered in 1994. The question “Son of man, can these dry bones live again?” rung in my ears the whole time. I imagined how Ezekiel must have felt as he witnessed the valley of dry bones of his countrymen, --
Something weird about me: I am a person who has a great love of the Prophetic writings—I read them often, for fun. I find the prophetic imagination intriguing. Perhaps it is the prophetic flair for dramatic and creative spontaneity that speaks to me as an artist. (You know the prophets were the performance artists of their day, Ezekiel, for instance, laid on his left side for 380 days then flipped over on his right side for 40 more just to prove a point!) But Ezekiel has particular interest for me now as I find myself working in a country that has been effectively been under siege for the past 14 years.
Ezekiel was prophecying during the Bablylonian siege of Jerusalem. The siege lasted several years during which time he prophecied furiously against Judah until it was finally overrun by the Babylonians. His language is far harsher than mine, but the message through this time of the siege was basically this: Resisitance is Futile! There is no military solution for the Israelites. Judah will be defeated, Jerusalem will fall and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
The causes however were never attributed to Babylon’s military superiority, but rather to Judah’s spiritual condition. Judah had turned from away from God, sacrificed its children in fire to idols, forsaken its widows and orphans, made a mockery of justice, and abandonned their role as examplar Yahweh’s Holiness.
But despite all his forwarnings of gloom and doom, it is important to understand that Ezekiel was not a cynic! Deeply pessimistic, yes, but not cynical. He did not see himself as apart from or above, but very much a part of his nation. He took tremendous personal risks to condemn the direction his nation was heading and to try to get them to change course
The other amazing thing about him to me, is that despite his dire prophecies and pessimism about the present, his vision of the future was irrationally, almost perversely optimistic and hopeful. This is beautifully expressed in his vision of the Valley of Dry Bones.
This vision would have come well after the siege of Jerusalem was over, the demolition of the nation of Israel was complete, its armies slaughtered--its people, those who survived, were carried off into slavery in Babylon.
In the vision Ezekiel finds himself in the valley of dry bones. The bones of his people.
The special care to remark not just on the fact that all that is left of Israel’s army is bones, but VERY DRY bones, amplifies the existential fact of the situation. This is beyond hope.
But what is particularly intriguing about this scene is what happens next. God asks Ezekiel a question: Son of man, can these dry bones live again? That is my favorite part of the whole passage. God’s question to him and us: Son of man, can these dry bones live again? I find it intriguing because it seems like a test—a test of faith, or perhaps of Ezekiel’s willingness to hope. What is the right answer? What would you say if God asked you about a seemingly hopeless situation--say the conflict in Congo, or Afghanistan? It seems like both yes and no are problematic.
Yes--contradicts everything that empirical experience would have shown Ezekiel or us. Dry bones do not come back to life, even children know that. Right?
On the other hand, NO, is a refutation of faith, and even worse, an abdication of hope. Isn’t anything possible for God?
Ezekiel’s answer seems like the only answer that walks the humble line between hope and skepticism and I believe instructs us about an attitude we might adopt in our hearts in the face of a seemingly impossible situation. “Sovereign Lord, You Know,”
Then God proceeds to lay out his development strategy for the restoration of the country. Notice he does not start with a loan from the World Bank, a strategic alliance, a generous aid package, or even Doctors Without Borders.
He says: son of man Preach to these dry bones, say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’
The problem with the dry bones, the underlying cause of their current condition, is spiritual, and the restoration is for God first and foremost a spiritual one. The bones themselves in verse 11 even describe themselves as being without hope.
Ezekiel obeys God and then witnesses, in his vision, a miraculous restoration, the bones, tendons, flesh, and skin coming together, a renewal that begins at the sinews of each person, a healing that renews every individual, until they rise again together as a nation.
God again commands Ezekiel, again to propecy to them, so that his breath would enter them, I believe, in the passage, the breath symbolizes the restoration of unity and hope.
God’s word to the newly restored nation is this: “I will put my spirit in you and you will live and will settle in your own land.” I can imagine how the promise of returning to ones homeland would sound to the millions of refugees and internally displaced people in the great Lakes region of Africa. To those living as refugees and in an extended state of siege, this promise is truly a vision of salvation.
The passage is a poetic vision of the good future, written by one of the Bible’s great pessimists. It is invoked frequently in song and sermon by people who have been oppressed and yet hope for a better tomorrow. In our own cultural context it was a rallying cry for African Americans and probably best recalled in that song Them Bones Gonna Rise Tonight.
So how does this sound to someone living in Central Africa today? Does it have resonance in a region of the world mired in ethnic conflict and a scale of carnage rivaled only, in recent history by World War 2? Is it a realistic promise, or simply pie in the sky?
And what might it have to tell us working in Faith based development groups like MCC? Are there lessons for us today in our current context? A development strategy? Can we attribute much of what we see in terms of poverty and misery to spiritual privation, or are the problems related primarily to scarcity, and ignorance?
I can tell you what I know about Burundi: Rebecca and I arrived less than a month after a tenuous peace accord had been struck between various rebel groups to end, or at least pause, 14 years of civil war.
The chief rivalry is between two ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. While the conflict was exacerbated by colonialism which supported the minority elite Tutsi over the Hutu, it would be naïve to attribute its bloody history entirely to the abuses of colonialism.
Bujumbura, the capital city where Rebecca and I live, looks like a city that has been under siege for years. The infrastructure is badly damaged and does not look like there has been any effort to repair it. Outside the city many buildings and homes are in ruins, obviously the result of explosives or fire.
For a country no bigger than the State of Maryland, it has the distinction of being on many indexes, the poorest country in the world. In GDP, per capita income it is at the bottom. It has an out of control birthrate, high infant mortality, low life expectancy, land scarcity, and an HIV infection rate between 7 and 10 percent. Despite all this, violent death from the eruption of ethnic conflict remains the most serious threat. I can tell you personally that there is not one person I have met among our local friends, partners and associates who has not had one or more family members murdered as a result of ethnic conflict.
It is honestly hard to know where to begin in all this, as a small Christian NGO. There is so much need…
I confess it is strange to be sitting in such a comfortable setting and enjoying the beauty of the season and the loving care of our families and yet feeling strangely restless to return, to the suffering and need, the heat, the bad roads, the challenges of language, but close to brothers and sisters who need us now. I do not feel like I am home here anymore, eventhough I feel embraced and pampered here, my heart is in Central Africa right now. I think we will all be ready to go when it is time. Oren does talk fondly about his friends, and especially his nanny Denise who he really likes. I do pray that David will not be exposed to to much illness in his infancy but there will be some risk of that—particularly malaria.
The reason this blog is so late is that I have done a ton of writing this week. Rebecca and I presented two programs this week, one for my parents’s Baptist Church and one for North Baltimore Mennonite where Rebecca is a member. I did a powerpoint show for the former and a sermon for the latter. I can tell you I spent many hours writing at the computer right through Sunday morning. So that is why this is late. For your interest (and posterity) I am posting the sermon if you want to read it.—If you don’t I won’t be offended. The gist of it is that the causes of poverty are spiritual and not material. It somewhat explains the approach that MCC takes to its development strategy. If you are interested in mission work you might find it interesting.
Imagining a good future:
(Sermon Preached by Paul Mosley at North Baltimore Mennonite Church, 11/16/2008)
Read Ezekiel 37:1-14 The Valley of Dry Bones
I want to begin by saying what an honor it is to be here in this place today to share with you all. My wife Rebecca is a member here, and we have many fond memories of being here in the past. Particularly on July 12, 2003 when we were married.
For those of you who do not know us well, Rebecca and I are Country Representatives for MCC in Rwanda and Burundi. We live there with our son Oren will return in Jan with our new son David as well. This is a new assignment for us, one we began in July of this year. Prior to that I had had a career as a performing artist, dancer and choreographer and was teaching at Vassar College, Rebecca is a graduate of Regent seminary and was working as a pastor of youth ministries in a Methodist Church in Poughkeepsie NY.
Our decision to enter the field of mission and development with MCC as we begin raising a young family can only be explained as an act of faith that came out of our love of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we do trust that his timing is perfect.
Rebecca and I will be sharing the pulpit today, I will be laying the groundwork and she will be relating some stories from our experiences in Rwanda and Burundi that illustrate our points.
Let me speak a moment to our selection of the passage this morning. The Ezekiel passage was put on my heart very shortly after our arrival in Burundi. We took a trip up to Rwanda and stopped at a genocide memorial where the skeletal remains of over 9000 people are kept in a church where they were slaughtered in 1994. The question “Son of man, can these dry bones live again?” rung in my ears the whole time. I imagined how Ezekiel must have felt as he witnessed the valley of dry bones of his countrymen, --
Something weird about me: I am a person who has a great love of the Prophetic writings—I read them often, for fun. I find the prophetic imagination intriguing. Perhaps it is the prophetic flair for dramatic and creative spontaneity that speaks to me as an artist. (You know the prophets were the performance artists of their day, Ezekiel, for instance, laid on his left side for 380 days then flipped over on his right side for 40 more just to prove a point!) But Ezekiel has particular interest for me now as I find myself working in a country that has been effectively been under siege for the past 14 years.
Ezekiel was prophecying during the Bablylonian siege of Jerusalem. The siege lasted several years during which time he prophecied furiously against Judah until it was finally overrun by the Babylonians. His language is far harsher than mine, but the message through this time of the siege was basically this: Resisitance is Futile! There is no military solution for the Israelites. Judah will be defeated, Jerusalem will fall and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
The causes however were never attributed to Babylon’s military superiority, but rather to Judah’s spiritual condition. Judah had turned from away from God, sacrificed its children in fire to idols, forsaken its widows and orphans, made a mockery of justice, and abandonned their role as examplar Yahweh’s Holiness.
But despite all his forwarnings of gloom and doom, it is important to understand that Ezekiel was not a cynic! Deeply pessimistic, yes, but not cynical. He did not see himself as apart from or above, but very much a part of his nation. He took tremendous personal risks to condemn the direction his nation was heading and to try to get them to change course
The other amazing thing about him to me, is that despite his dire prophecies and pessimism about the present, his vision of the future was irrationally, almost perversely optimistic and hopeful. This is beautifully expressed in his vision of the Valley of Dry Bones.
This vision would have come well after the siege of Jerusalem was over, the demolition of the nation of Israel was complete, its armies slaughtered--its people, those who survived, were carried off into slavery in Babylon.
In the vision Ezekiel finds himself in the valley of dry bones. The bones of his people.
The special care to remark not just on the fact that all that is left of Israel’s army is bones, but VERY DRY bones, amplifies the existential fact of the situation. This is beyond hope.
But what is particularly intriguing about this scene is what happens next. God asks Ezekiel a question: Son of man, can these dry bones live again? That is my favorite part of the whole passage. God’s question to him and us: Son of man, can these dry bones live again? I find it intriguing because it seems like a test—a test of faith, or perhaps of Ezekiel’s willingness to hope. What is the right answer? What would you say if God asked you about a seemingly hopeless situation--say the conflict in Congo, or Afghanistan? It seems like both yes and no are problematic.
Yes--contradicts everything that empirical experience would have shown Ezekiel or us. Dry bones do not come back to life, even children know that. Right?
On the other hand, NO, is a refutation of faith, and even worse, an abdication of hope. Isn’t anything possible for God?
Ezekiel’s answer seems like the only answer that walks the humble line between hope and skepticism and I believe instructs us about an attitude we might adopt in our hearts in the face of a seemingly impossible situation. “Sovereign Lord, You Know,”
Then God proceeds to lay out his development strategy for the restoration of the country. Notice he does not start with a loan from the World Bank, a strategic alliance, a generous aid package, or even Doctors Without Borders.
He says: son of man Preach to these dry bones, say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’
The problem with the dry bones, the underlying cause of their current condition, is spiritual, and the restoration is for God first and foremost a spiritual one. The bones themselves in verse 11 even describe themselves as being without hope.
Ezekiel obeys God and then witnesses, in his vision, a miraculous restoration, the bones, tendons, flesh, and skin coming together, a renewal that begins at the sinews of each person, a healing that renews every individual, until they rise again together as a nation.
God again commands Ezekiel, again to propecy to them, so that his breath would enter them, I believe, in the passage, the breath symbolizes the restoration of unity and hope.
God’s word to the newly restored nation is this: “I will put my spirit in you and you will live and will settle in your own land.” I can imagine how the promise of returning to ones homeland would sound to the millions of refugees and internally displaced people in the great Lakes region of Africa. To those living as refugees and in an extended state of siege, this promise is truly a vision of salvation.
The passage is a poetic vision of the good future, written by one of the Bible’s great pessimists. It is invoked frequently in song and sermon by people who have been oppressed and yet hope for a better tomorrow. In our own cultural context it was a rallying cry for African Americans and probably best recalled in that song Them Bones Gonna Rise Tonight.
So how does this sound to someone living in Central Africa today? Does it have resonance in a region of the world mired in ethnic conflict and a scale of carnage rivaled only, in recent history by World War 2? Is it a realistic promise, or simply pie in the sky?
And what might it have to tell us working in Faith based development groups like MCC? Are there lessons for us today in our current context? A development strategy? Can we attribute much of what we see in terms of poverty and misery to spiritual privation, or are the problems related primarily to scarcity, and ignorance?
I can tell you what I know about Burundi: Rebecca and I arrived less than a month after a tenuous peace accord had been struck between various rebel groups to end, or at least pause, 14 years of civil war.
The chief rivalry is between two ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. While the conflict was exacerbated by colonialism which supported the minority elite Tutsi over the Hutu, it would be naïve to attribute its bloody history entirely to the abuses of colonialism.
Bujumbura, the capital city where Rebecca and I live, looks like a city that has been under siege for years. The infrastructure is badly damaged and does not look like there has been any effort to repair it. Outside the city many buildings and homes are in ruins, obviously the result of explosives or fire.
For a country no bigger than the State of Maryland, it has the distinction of being on many indexes, the poorest country in the world. In GDP, per capita income it is at the bottom. It has an out of control birthrate, high infant mortality, low life expectancy, land scarcity, and an HIV infection rate between 7 and 10 percent. Despite all this, violent death from the eruption of ethnic conflict remains the most serious threat. I can tell you personally that there is not one person I have met among our local friends, partners and associates who has not had one or more family members murdered as a result of ethnic conflict.
It is honestly hard to know where to begin in all this, as a small Christian NGO. There is so much need…
The hand of the LORD was upon 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 dry bones live?"
I said, "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know."
Let me come back to the question: Is there a lesson for us as Christians who want to serve the poor and oppressed in mission work in this passage, perhaps even a strategy. As I have said, Ezekiel’s vision suggests that the problem for Israel was first and foremost a spiritual one. Well I can tell you that there is a growing consensus among development workers that Ezekiel really hit the nail on the head!
In the book Walking with The Poor, Bryant Meyers a long time director of World Vision suggests that faith based organizations need to take a wholistic approach to development and evangelism, and understand the spiritual underpinnings of poverty. He uses the term transformative development to describe this approach. In the book he claims that until recently development organizations have misunderstood the real causes of poverty.
Historically he explains, it was presumed that the difference between rich and poor nations was that rich nations had material resources and poor nations did not. (the haves and have nots) The solution therefore was to give things to poor countries. (That did not work- it is now common knowledge that giving things to countries can destroy local markets and entrepreneurs.) This strategy was revised in the 70s and 80s to identify the big difference as education not material resources. Ignorance was the problem and transfer of knowledge became the solution. But even transfer of knowledge alone we are seeing, has done little to alleviate poverty in the world and in fact, often has exacerbated inequity.
I said, "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know."
Let me come back to the question: Is there a lesson for us as Christians who want to serve the poor and oppressed in mission work in this passage, perhaps even a strategy. As I have said, Ezekiel’s vision suggests that the problem for Israel was first and foremost a spiritual one. Well I can tell you that there is a growing consensus among development workers that Ezekiel really hit the nail on the head!
In the book Walking with The Poor, Bryant Meyers a long time director of World Vision suggests that faith based organizations need to take a wholistic approach to development and evangelism, and understand the spiritual underpinnings of poverty. He uses the term transformative development to describe this approach. In the book he claims that until recently development organizations have misunderstood the real causes of poverty.
Historically he explains, it was presumed that the difference between rich and poor nations was that rich nations had material resources and poor nations did not. (the haves and have nots) The solution therefore was to give things to poor countries. (That did not work- it is now common knowledge that giving things to countries can destroy local markets and entrepreneurs.) This strategy was revised in the 70s and 80s to identify the big difference as education not material resources. Ignorance was the problem and transfer of knowledge became the solution. But even transfer of knowledge alone we are seeing, has done little to alleviate poverty in the world and in fact, often has exacerbated inequity.
Meyers does a serious inquiry into the root causes of poverty, and his conclusion, based on his experience, is that (low and behold) poverty is first and foremost a spiritual problem not a material one, and will not be solved with material or even educational intervention alone. It requires, first and foremost, a spiritual transformation of individuals and society.
He eloquently demonstrates this in his observation that in fact,
in every poor nation there are in fact poor and non poor regions,
IN a poor region there are poor and non poor communities
In a poor community, there are poor and non-poor households
In a poor household, there are poor and non-poor individuals (usually women and children are most vulnerable.)
By contrast I would add that in rich nations there are rich and non rich regions
In rich regions, there are rich and non rich communities
In rich communities there are rich and non rich households
In rich households there are rich and non rich individuals.
His point is that transfer of wealth and even knowledge do not change the underlying structures of injustice inherent in all societies and consequently will not succeed in eliminating poverty!
His conclusion: Development needs to go hand in hand with a transformative ideology. A gospel that offers hope for the future, stands against injustice and offers to individuals and society, healing of malformed, divisive identities. Identities like tutsi, hutu, slave, free, white, black, even Catholic, and Protestant. By malformed identities, I mean identities that uphold the lie (the lie that underlies all other lies): that some people are more valuable than others.
“Son of man prophecy to these dry bones, tell them, hear the word of the Lord.”
We are blessed, in our short experience with MCC to have inherited a very thoughtfully developed program that has put the principles of transformative development theory into practice. Our work in Burundi and Rwanda is primarily in the area peace and reconciliation. There is a great need for this kind of work in this region, as I have explained before. It is a problem that touches everyone. As Anabaptists, we are uniquely qualified to offer expertise, in this area based in our understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our strategy has been to identify exceptional, prophetic local Christian individuals who are working in the country and partner with them in their work. Despite the immense need, I am inspired daily by the commitment and hope, rooted in their faith, that inspires them to see ways they can transform society, against seemingly impossible odds. For them, it would be impossible to separate the work of peace and reconciliation from the Gospel of Christ, especially in the face of the terribly devisive malformed ethnic identities that have been the root of so much conflict.
Many of them came out of GBU the Francophone version of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. Their integrity and faith has been refined in the fires of ethnic conflict, and they have emerged courageous and with the integrity of those who know that they are alive today but for the grace of God and the calling to his purposes.
I am going to ask Rebecca to come up and tell you about several individuals who lead our partner organizations, both about their work, their character, and their faith.
Rebecca shares testimonies about several of our partners.
I would to close by telling you about a particular project organized by our partner in Rwanda called Friends Peace House.
They have created a prisoner reintegration project with a development component that I believe seeks to marry the gospel of peace with providing assistance for human need.
Many prisoners are being released from prison in Rwanda who had been convicted of crimes against humanity. As they come out, there is great anxiety for both them and victims of genocide. Prisoners fear revenge, victims fear prisoners will want to finish the genocide.
Friends Peach House sponsors 3 week workshops in which prisoners and victims meet together, share stories, ask for and offer forgiveness, reconcile to one another, pray together and hope together. At the end of the workshop they build houses for the most vulnerable participants. They build the houses together as a community. I have talked to these participants and they have told me how much these workshops have changed their lives. A prisoner told me he never understood the amount of prejudice he had grown up with. A survivor told me that he lived everyday of his life for 14 years in terror until the workshop. He came in terrified and bitter, but he came to realize “In order for me to have true peace, all must have peace.” He forgave the man who killed his family, they are friends now and are living in peace physical and spiritual. They also stand as a testimony to what the gospel looks like in practice. A restored individual, a restored community and maybe someday a restored nation.
It has been a privilege to witness the stirring of dry bones, the beginning of tendons and flesh attaching to joints because there are those bold enough to say to the dry bones: hear the word of the Lord.
Son of man, Can these dry bones live again?
Sovereign Lord, you know.
1 comment:
My heart is with you and stirred by your words.
Post a Comment