“No website; no relationship; no Mac computer or iPhone; no exercise, no diet, no supplement; no job, office, or title on my business card; no amount of Diet Coke, good scotch, or bad beer; no self-help book, therapist, or self-improvement class; no car, house, or any other status symbol I can think to buy; no movie, video game, and not matter how truly awesome Dr. Who is.
They have all done nothing more than temporarily anesthetize the longing in my soul to be complete, to be whole, to be connected, to be okay, to love and be loved as I am now with too much weight, too much debt, too much depression, too much grey, too much geek, and not enough of anything else.
And i despair that my trip on this rock flying around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour is some sort of sick cosmic joke.
But then, I remember. I remember the Valley. The Valley of the Dry Bones.
God is talking to the prophet Ezekiel and guides him into something resembling a massive open grave.
It’s a valley covered, from one end to the next, with nothing but humanity at its core. In this valley there is absolutely no hope of life.
God tells Ezekiel to cry out, cry out to those dry bones, cry out to God’s children. Tell them to rise, tell them to rise, tell them to listen to God and rise. They listen.
And God lifts them up, puts them back together, and breathes into them. And they breathe anew. And God fills them with his Spirit. And where there was once death, hopelessness and despair, there is new life.
In hearing that, there is light. There is hope. And that is sufficient.”
Accidental Saints, Vignettes from an Easter Vigil — Nadia Bolz-Weber