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World Changing Words Devotional-Day 23

by David Joynt on August 24, 2020


EZEKIEL 37:3| 3 He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?" I answered, "O Lord God, you know."

 Ezekiel is in the Valley of Dry Bones at the behest of God, for the “hand of the Lord” came upon him, and the Spirit of the Lord led him there. After touring the dry and dusty bones, a kind of       graveyard without graves, a single question is asked, “mortal, can these bones live?”

 Dry bones moments and places awake one of two responses from us: resignation or imagination. Must we resign ourselves to loss, failure, or death, or can we imagine a new future?

 Faced with the valley of desiccated corpses can we see an army of living souls? Can we imagine Resurrection when we stare at a   gravestone? Renewal when the church struggles? Restoration when relationships are in crisis? Healing when the diagnosis is poor?

 Pray for bold and holy imagination.

 

Tags: imagination, resignation

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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