Skin and Bones

I have always been fascinated by the human body. It’s intricate, yet the concept is somewhat simplistic—it keeps us alive and breathing until it can’t, and then we die. As a young person that seems to have a body of an 80 year old I have had a lot of exposure to learning the inner workings of our body. I've learned that torn tendons or ligaments can try to fix themselves. That gallbladders are essential to avoid long term toilet sessions. And each concussion reduces the chance of remembering ones name. But to me the most amazing part of the skin. Think about it. Underneath the vast stretchy organ is a skeleton that shapes our being and houses our ability to stay alive. The skin is what makes a person different. It is what gives us individuality, a way to tell one person from another. Without it we are all the same. Without it we are dead. The two need each other to make a being. The skin needs the skeleton’s ability to shape and the skeleton needs the skin to create uniqueness. If I was stripped of everything that made me Holly Ryan I would in turn be a dead skeleton, a collection of dry bones—nothing. 

This idea is the central component of our connection with God. Without Him we are nothing. We are simply skeletons, all the same and all nonexistent. In truth, humanity is nothing but dust, gathered and curated by the One who was never created and forever existed before the beginning of time. There are many illustrations like this in the Bible. We see Noah withstand the power of a flood that killed all of humanity, Moses split a freaking sea, and Joshua who led a people to scream and blow trumpets until the walls of Jericho fell down. When have you ever heard of a demolition by scream? All of these acts are because God made it possible. Because He strengthened humanities dry bones and made crap happen.

Man, woman, exist because the Lord picked up the dust and made us into something. 

In John 15:5 Jesus says to his disciples, "I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." We must be fully dependent on Him, because to be honest, we suck on our own. On our own there is war, destruction, poverty, demonic rulers. On our own we build an army of unstable minds who's sole purpose is personal gain and pleasure. Without the Love of God, our bodies are dead, our souls blackened, we are walking skeletons. Beauty, real beauty, uncreated beauty, ceases to exist unless we place on our armor of God and cover our dry bones with His eternal Life. Skin and bones, skin and bones. Our earthly bodies all stop working in the end. But without the skin, we never even live. Without walking in the covering of the Uncreated, when our bodies stop, they will never begin again. We return to dry bones. We return to dust, our lives forgotten. But with Him, we never die, we never stop, we get to sing a song that lasts forever to a God who lives forever and life, real uncreated life, never ends. 

Like I said, our bodies intricate, but not complicated. We are a collection of dry bones. When we say a wholly yes to God, we become something. Something that is real and never ending—we become His inheritance.