Be Amazed: Peace in the Valley of Dry Bones
Second Sunday of Advent – December 7, 2025
Introduction: Making a Statement
Do you remember your first day at a new job and the mandatory “orientation and training”? Or maybe you remember those early days of retirement, when you thought, “This is amazing, I finally have some free time,” so you signed up to volunteer somewhere—only to discover that volunteering also came with orientation and training.
I had one of those “orientation-and-training” experiences some years ago. During orientation week, our Executive Director looked at our incoming group of idealistic young leaders and said with a grin, “My goal is for each of you to get through your term of office without getting arrested!” Arrested—what did he mean? Each year, we would send student executives to Parliament Hill to meet with MPs and engage in advocacy, and he warned us to be careful because some organizations actively recruit idealistic young people to their cause. That year, a colleague attended an event the night before a planned march where they received “protestor training.” A dozen people walking peacefully with cardboard signs is not particularly newsworthy. But if a group intentionally breaches the barricade that marks the boundary where protesting is permitted, people get arrested. Now there’s a headline and a photo op. Our ED didn’t want his young leaders to become pawns in political theatre.
And that brings us to Ezekiel. People will sometimes do dramatic things for attention. But in Scripture, God’s prophets sometimes did dramatic things for a different reason: not to manufacture drama, but to tell the truth and wake people up to a reality they had become numb to.
Ezekiel: Enacted Metaphors and Prophetic Parables
Ezekiel is one of the major prophets in the Old Testament, meaning his book is longer than those of the minor prophets like Habakkuk from last week. Yet for many of us, Ezekiel is oddly less familiar. Many still hear Ezekiel’s name and think, “Wait… who was that guy again?” Ezekiel lived at one of the most devastating moments in Israel’s history: the fall of Judah and the Babylonian exile. Babylon invaded, Jerusalem was crushed, the temple was destroyed, and God’s people were forcibly relocated to a foreign land. It wasn’t only a political crisis; it was a spiritual crisis—like the bottom dropped out of their lives and community. Ezekiel didn’t begin as a “full-time prophet.” He was originally a priest (Ezekiel 1:3), teaching God’s law and helping the people live as a worshiping community. But in exile, with the temple gone and the people scattered, God called him into a prophetic role: a messenger who spoke God’s word into a specific moment—exposing sin, interpreting crisis, and holding out hope.
What makes Ezekiel stand out is how God often asked him to communicate. God told him to embody the message through enacted metaphors—building a model of Jerusalem under siege, lying on his side for weeks as an embodied sermon, eating rationed food cooked over animal dung as a sign of desperation and defilement, and even, when Ezekiel’s wife dies, not mourning publicly (Ezekiel 4; 24). Not because grief doesn’t matter, but because a great catastrophe was coming, and God wanted the people to see the truth before it was too late. Ezekiel is a priest in exile turned prophet, called to help a traumatized people face reality, and to believe that even there, God is still speaking and still able to bring life.
The Valley of Dry Bones
Ezekiel 37 opens with a vision: God leads Ezekiel into a valley littered with bones, representing the people of Israel in the wake of exile and ruin. Then the Lord asks: “Son of man, can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3, NIV). Ezekiel answers with honest humility: “Sovereign LORD, you alone know” (v.3). He doesn’t offer false optimism or surrender to despair; he places the question back into God’s hands.
Then God commands him: “Prophesy to these bones” (v.4). Speak God’s word into what looks irreversible. God promises re-creation: “I will make breath enter you… I will attach tendons… make flesh… cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life” (vv.5–6, NIV). That mention of tendons reminds me of a second-year medical student I know, Cait. She tore her ACL playing women’s tackle football, and five surgeries later, doctors are still trying to get those ligaments and tendons functioning properly again. Modern medicine is remarkable, but it also exposes the limits of human repair. Ezekiel’s vision is the opposite: God’s word doing what we cannot.
So Ezekiel obeys: “I prophesied as I was commanded” (v.7). The valley starts to sound like creation: “there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together” (v.7). Tendons and flesh appear. Skin covers them. But then a crucial line: “there was no breath in them” (v.8). Form without life—structure without the animating Spirit. God then commands Ezekiel to prophesy again—this time to the breath: “Prophesy to the breath” (v.9). Ezekiel obeys, “and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army” (v.10). Not an army of conquest, but a people restored—alive, standing, ready to be God’s people again. Then God explains: “These bones are the people of Israel” (v.11)—exiles who say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone” (v.11). The valley is their external ruin and their internal despair. And the climax is the deepest promise: “I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live” (v.14). The ultimate gift is not merely life restored; it is God’s own life within them—the Spirit as the breath of God.
Application
In Advent, we learn to wait and hope for Jesus, the God who comes near. Advent tells the truth about our need, and it tells the truth about God’s nearness—Ezekiel 37 gives language for seasons when life feels dry and beyond repair, and it gives a promise: God breathes life into what looks dead.
I thought back to my installation service here at First Mennonite Church, when I said that “our church has some good bones.” Ezekiel helps me say it more clearly now: a church can have good bones—history, traditions, committees, faithful habits—and still need breath: the Spirit of God. And what I have learned since arriving is that we have more than good bones. We have good people—faithful people, praying people, people who have served and kept showing up. Which is why my prayer as we step toward a new year is simple: Lord, breathe on us again. Put your Spirit in us, and help us live.
And this turns us decisively toward Jesus. Ezekiel promised that God would breathe life into what was dead. Jesus shows us what that promise looks like when God steps into our world in flesh. Standing in front of Lazarus’s tomb, Jesus says: “I am the resurrection and the life… Do you believe this?” (John 11:25–26, NIV). That question is not only for Martha. Do you believe in Jesus’ resurrecting power today?
Closing Prayer
Sovereign LORD, you alone know.
You see the places in us that feel dry, scattered, and beyond repair.
Speak your word into our valley, and breathe on us again.
Put your Spirit in us, and help us live.
Jesus, you are the resurrection and the life—teach us to believe you, trust you, and follow you.
Make us a people who stand up again, not by our strength, but by your breath within us.
Amen.
Be Amazed: Hope in the Furnace
First Sunday of Advent – November 30, 2025
Names and Identity
During COVID, I found myself in a tiny exam room meeting a new doctor for the first time. The door swung open, and in he walked—scrubs, white coat, stethoscope over his shoulder. Because it was still the height of COVID protocols, he wore a mask and a face shield, so I couldn’t read his expression, but we made eye contact. Later, he would tell me he was from the Congo. He looked down at my chart, read my name aloud, and paused. “Calvary deJong,” he said slowly. Then he looked up again and added, “That is not a very common name.” He was right. People mix it up with cavalry or Calgary all the time. But he recognized right away that it had a religious meaning.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, “I blame my parents!” It reminded me of a shirt I had as a teenager that said, in big bold letters: MY PARENTS MADE ME WHAT I AM TODAY, and in smaller print underneath in parentheses: (I’m thinking of suing!) My new doctor friend didn’t laugh. He corrected me, almost like he wanted to protect something sacred: “No. Your name is a great honour.”
You see, in many African cultures, names are not just meant to sound nice; they are meant to be meaningful. Names like Happy, Blessed, Destiny, or God’s Will are very common. A name tells a story. A name provides an identity. And that takes us right into the heart of today’s Scriptures: When the world tries to rename you—when it tells you who you are—will you bow to that story? Or will you stand in the name God gives?
Habakkuk: Honest Faith, Defiant Hope
Habakkuk is a short book and one of the minor prophets, and rather than starting with a prophetic message from God to his people, it begins with a complaint from Habakkuk to God. Habakkuk looks at the nation of Judah and sees violence, injustice, and what is right being twisted, and he cries out, “How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen?” (Habakkuk 1:2, NIV). He is not just whining; he is pleading for God to act.
God answers, but not the way Habakkuk expects. “Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed” (Habakkuk 1:5, NIV). Yet the “amaze” here is not a pleasant surprise. Instead, God says judgment is coming, and Babylon will be the instrument of Judah’s discipline.
Habakkuk protests again: how can a holy God use a nation even more wicked than Judah? God does not give Habakkuk a simple explanation, but He does give him a place to stand: live by faith, and remember that Babylon is not a god on a throne, but a tool in God’s hand. And, a warning that the Babylonians’ day of justice is coming too.
By the end, Habakkuk’s complaint has become worship. He imagines the worst that could happen—no fruit, no grain, no sheep, no cattle—and then he makes a stunning choice: “Yet I will rejoice in the LORD… The Sovereign LORD is my strength” (Habakkuk 3:18–19, NIV). That is defiant hope: joy anchored to God’s character, not to easy circumstances.
Daniel 3: When the Fire Gets Personal
Most people familiar with children’s Bible stories know Daniel’s three friends by their Babylonian names—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—but those weren’t their given names. Their Hebrew names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, and each one is a little confession of faith:
- Hananiah means “Yahweh is gracious.”
- Mishael means “Who is like God?”
- Azariah means “Yahweh has helped.”
These names are a daily reminder: we belong to the LORD. But Babylon renames them, because empires always do. An empire doesn’t just conquer land; it conquers imagination. It takes the best and brightest and attempts to assimilate them and “re-story” them: new language, new customs, new gods, new names. The goal is not simply to relocate you—it’s to redefine you. And the Babylonian names are not neutral. Their new names are designed to contradict the old ones:
- Shadrach is “command of Aku,” referencing Aku, a Mesopotamian moon-god.
- Meshach means “Who is like Aku?”—a rival confession meant to compete directly with “Who is like God?”
- Abednego means “servant of Nego/Nebo” a Babylonian deity associated with wisdom and writing
Do you see what Babylon is doing? Quietly replacing the identity of these young men. Then in Daniel 3, the empire stops making suggestions and starts making demands. A massive image is set up. Music plays. Everyone is commanded to bow. It’s a public loyalty test—an outward act meant to reveal inward allegiance.
But when the crowd bends its knee, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah stay standing. In effect, they are saying: You can place me in your system, and you can change what you call me, but you will not claim my highest allegiance. You can rename me—but you can’t own me. I will not bow.
Application: Bring Your Labels to Jesus
So here is the invitation for week one of Advent: bring to Jesus the labels people have placed on you—the ones you’ve worn so long they feel like your name. Failure. Disappointment. Not good enough. Overlooked. A burden. The Black Sheep.
Bring Jesus the labels others gave you and the ones you gave yourself: Divorced, Addicted, Anxious. Bring Him the labels the world uses to shrink you: too young, too old, irrelevant. And instead of bowing to those voices, bow to Jesus alone, and let Him speak the truest name over you: you are beloved children of God.
As a church, we choose the same path. We will not let the world rename us as too small to matter. Immanuel is with us. So we will make room for children and seniors, newcomers and long-timers—not as spectators, but as disciples with a place and a purpose. And when someone is in the furnace—whether that is a hospital room, long-term care, grief, loneliness—we will show up with the presence of Jesus.
Conclusion
Habakkuk teaches us to be honest about pain without quitting on God. Daniel’s friends teach us to stand when the world demands we bow. Advent tells us why we can do both: because God has come near. We are not alone in the fire, and we won’t bow. We will be amazed—because the Sovereign LORD is our strength, and Immanuel is with us.
Prayer of Response
Lord Jesus, when fear tries to rename us, help us to stand in Your grace. Teach us to rejoice in You when life is hard. Speak Your true name over us—beloved—and make us a people who carry Your presence into the furnace with those who suffer. Amen.
Unity in Conflict: A Counter-Cultural Approach
Week 1: Conflict: Inevitable, Yet Positive
The Illusion of a Conflict-Free Life
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to always be right and to always get what you want? If you pause and imagine it for a moment, it sounds like that would simplify almost everything. There would be no disagreements to work through, no awkward conversations where you have to backtrack or admit you were wrong, no tension over decisions—where to go out for dinner, what to do on vacation, how to spend your time or order your life together. Everything would simply fall into place, and at first, that almost sounds like perfect peace.
In The Stepford Wives, a woman named Joanna moves to a suburban town where everything seems almost perfect. Maybe too perfect. The women are kind, attentive, agreeable, endlessly accommodating, and always romantically available to their husbands. Yet as the story unfolds, Joanna discovers that the reason is that the men in the town have replaced their wives with robots! What initially appears to be harmony is revealed to be something far more unsettling. Conflict has been eliminated, but so has the reality of a real relationship. And while that mystery-thriller story is extreme, the instinct behind it is not. Perhaps in more subtle ways, we are inclined to diminish the personhood of others around us. When conflict arises, we want to resolve it quickly, to win the argument, or move past the tension without truly engaging the person in front of us. But the person you are in conflict with is not merely a position to correct or a problem to solve. They are someone created in the image of God. Which means that if conflict is inevitable—and it is—the deeper question is not whether we will face it, but who we will become in the midst of conflict?
The Image of God and the Layers of the Self
When we turn to Genesis 1, we are stepping into a world as God intended it to be. At the climax of creation, we read, “So God created mankind in his own image… and God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:26, 31, NIV). This is not only a statement about where we come from, but about who we are. To be made in the image of God is to carry a God-given dignity, to reflect something of His character into the world, and to bear a worth that is not earned but God-given. And yet, as foundational as that truth is, it is remarkably easy to forget that if I am made in the image of God, then so is every other person as well—including the one I find myself in conflict with. But conflict has a way of narrowing our vision until we are no longer engaging a person but reacting to a position. We begin to flatten the other person, reducing them to something more manageable in our own minds.
Betty Pries, in her book The Space Between Us, offers a helpful way of understanding what is happening beneath the surface of those reactions. She suggests that we tend to live out of three layers of the self. The descriptive self names what is simply true about us—our story, our background, our identity—without judgment or distortion. The defended self develops over time as we learn to protect what matters to us; it manages our image, avoids pain, and reacts when we feel threatened. And then there is the deeper self, the place where we are most grounded and most aligned with who God created us to be, less driven by fear and more open to grace, curiosity, and generosity.
When Paul the Apostle writes that “the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh” (Galatians 5:17, NIV), we begin to see a clear parallel. What Pries calls the defended self aligns closely with what Scripture calls the flesh—that inward pull toward self-protection, control, and self-assertion. Whereas the deeper self reflects life in the Spirit, where we are no longer governed by fear but are freed to live in openness and love.
In the midst of conflict, we instinctively lean into that defended self. We tell ourselves the most generous possible story about our own motives, while telling a far less generous story about the other person. We inflate ourselves and deflate them, creating a dividing line between “us” and “them.” The good guys and the bad guys. And in doing so, we begin to lose sight of the image of God—not only in the other person, but even in ourselves.
A Unity Centred on Christ & The Recognition That I Am Not
Jesus never prayed that His followers would always agree, but He did pray that they would be one. As Ronald J. Kraybill observes, “Jesus’ desire that his followers become one suggests that he knew we would struggle with division. He did not pray that we would always agree, but that we would stay together in the same love that bound Jesus to the Father. We stay together so that the world may know.”
This is the kind of community we are called to be. Not a community without conflict, but a community that remains in love in the midst of conflict. And this is where the confession of John the Baptist becomes so significant. In the Gospel of John, when he is asked whether he is the chosen one, the people have been waiting for, John the Baptist responds simply: “I am not the Christ” (John 1:20, NIV). This confession that “I am not the Christ” has the power to de-centre us from ourselves and to instead re-centre on Jesus. Because in moments of tension, we are often tempted to place ourselves at the center—to defend and justify ourselves and our own perspective. But when we say, “I am not the Christ,” we step out of that false center of the defended self. We are reminded that we do not need to control the outcome, that we do not need to win, and that we are not the ones holding everything together. Rather, Christ is. And when Christ becomes the center, our conflicts do not disappear, but they are no longer ultimate. We are holding onto something greater, something that allows us to remain in relationship even when we do not always agree.
The Practice of Presence
This leads us into a different way of being in the midst of conflict, one that is grounded not in avoidance or control, but in presence. We are invited to be present with God, present with ourselves, and present with one another. This kind of presence requires growing in self-awareness, learning to notice what is happening within us when tension arises. When anger surfaces, or offence takes hold, it is often a signal that something deeper is at stake, that some part of our defended self feels threatened. Rather than reacting immediately, we are invited to become attentive. We begin to ask what is happening beneath the surface, whether we are experiencing a loss of security, identity, or place? These are not easy questions, but they are essential if we are to remain present in conflict. Because when we bring that awareness into the presence of God, something begins to shift. We create space to slow down, to listen, and to respond with intentionality from the deeper self and respond to the leading of the Spirit, rather than react out of instinct from the defended self and the flesh. And in that space, a different kind of community begins to take shape. Not one without conflict, but one marked by a commitment to remain in love, a community that is not centred on always being right, but centred on Christ. And as we learn to live from that Jesus-centred paradigm, we begin to embody the unity of the Spirit that Jesus prayed for—a unity that is formed even in the very midst of our differences.
