Building a Life | It Doesn't Have to Be This Way, March 14, 2021

Regardless of where we have been worshiping over the past year, we, the church, Christ’s called and gathered body, are resurrection people. We do not believe that sin and death and the hopelessness of the valley of dry bones hold the last word. This has been difficult to remember of the past year, because, frankly, death and dry bones have been part of our everyday life.

Even if you have somehow managed to avoid the virus over the past year you have still had your life turned upside down. You might be working from home. Maybe you lost your job. Maybe you've been separated from family – physically because of the virus and socially as well because of disagreement over the need for masks, distancing, and new protocols. Maybe you're coming off a shift where you were wearing one of those astronaut-like suits only to see people at the grocery store ignoring the practices that would keep them from needing your care. This past year has proved to us, whether we wanted it to or not, that no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we want it to be different, sin and death, and the valley of dry bones, are ever around us.

Week after week and day after day, the church being the same broken record that it has been since God called Christ out of a borrowed grave on the third day has proclaimed hope and promise. It didn't have to be like this, sin and death did not have to have a grip on creation. And church, we say it will not be like this. There is hope. We have been assured through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, promised that sin and death do not hold the last word. There is hope. Every time we proclaim Christ resurrected we are telling the world that what we see before us will not last and that the same God who can fill the driest of bones with breath, with life, can call a dead man from his eternal slumber, and raise a crucified Son will do the same to for us.