An Oracle of Ezekiel, with apologies to Clarence Jordan, and his Cotton Patch Gospels:
Then I was compelled to stroll down the DuPage River Trail, and the Spirit took me to the river’s edge. It was littered with the bones of thousands upon thousands of the dead. Plants, trees, bushes, thorns, flowers, and all manner of once thriving vegetation — now so desiccated and dehydrated that it seemed the river itself was their blood — their life — that ran through the midst of them.
The LORD asked me, “Can these bones live?
“Lord,” I replied, “you know.”
Then I watched as seasons turned, and blood-river was wicked by under-earth systems I could not see nor understand into the desiccated corpses, flickering them from browns to greens buds, and stems to leaves and flowers. As layer upon layer of the dead came to life, they awakened and drew others: first bugs and bees, then birds and creepers , than mammals and more until the entire valley overflowed with such an abundance of life that it became clear all death will forever be defied wherever it tries to gain a foothold in God’s creative project.
For God is in the grave-opening business — not for the sake of burials, but for resurrection.
Pastor Michael