Deer, Car, Buzzard or Bones?

Sam and I came across some bones while on our Sunday walk.  A skeleton of sorts.  It was the backbone and rib cage of what I can only guess was a deer.  It was kinda weird to see it laying there by the side of the road so we stood for a while, trying to figure out what it was.  Before concluding that it had been a deer, we speculated on a few other options . . .  an alligator perhaps?  A very large dog?  Maybe a dinosaur whose bones had been washed up by the rain?  OK, maybe not a dinosaur, but it was fun to speculate.

Where did these bones come from?

I never thought about it much, but whatever it was, it most certainly is not that now.  For it to be a deer, it must be alive.  Otherwise, it is the bones of a deer, or the body of a deer, or the skin of a deer, but not a deer.  Now it’s just the dead bones of a deer and whatever happened, it must have happened pretty quickly.  The last time Sam and I walked the gravel road, the bones were not there.  We considered the possibilities and decided this must be the poor deer’s story:

He was running along in the woods when he decided he was not happy where he was.  He wanted to be someplace else, so he headed out across Buford Highway to get to the woods and the gravel road on the other side.  Along came a car and ruined his plan, blindsiding him.  Mortally injured, he stumbled on across the road and down to the woods and gravel road along the other side.  There, he finally fell in the ditch and died.   The buzzards must have promptly picked away at him, leaving just these bones laying by the dirt road.

The story is familiar.  It happens to people too.  They go the wrong way at the wrong time and get blindsided.  Then along come the “buzzards” to pick at them while they are down, tearing away all that is left of them, leaving nothing but dry bones and no life.  Sometimes I am the deer.  Sometimes I am the car.  Sometimes, I am even the buzzard.  And there are definitely days when I feel like the dry bones.   But God, He is the one that can give life even to dry bones, and thankfully, He does.

“I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken and done it,” declares the LORD.'”
–  Ezekiel 37:14 NASB     Read Ezekiel 37:1-14 for the story of the dry bones come to life