Thou Knowest

In 1428, men with spades went into the churchyard at Lutterworth, in England. They had come to dig up a parish priest who had been dead for more than forty years.

His name was John Wycliffe, and he had put the Bible into English. He had also said things about the church that the Council of Constance condemned in 1415, about thirty years after his death. Part of the sentence was that his bones should not lie in holy ground. So they burned the bones and threw the ashes into the River Swift, which runs past the town. More than two centuries later, Thomas Fuller wrote the line people have borrowed ever since: "the ashes of Wickliff are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed the world over." Men went to all that trouble because they believed bones could still do something.

Ezekiel is set down in a valley full of bones, and the detail he keeps coming back to is how dry they are: "there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry." Dry bones have been dead a long time. Nobody argues over them, and nobody holds out hope for them. Then God asks the question: "Son of man, can these bones live?" Ezekiel does not say yes, and he does not say no. He answers, "O Lord GOD, thou knowest." He hands the question back to the only One who can answer it, and that is the most honest sentence in the chapter.

Then the chapter answers the question. The breath comes into the bones, "and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army." Only after that does God tell him what the bones stand for, and He repeats what the exiles were saying about themselves: "Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts." Fuller wrote with the ending already in front of him. Ezekiel stood in the valley with nothing but the question, and that is often where we stand too.

So think of the thing in your life that has dried up, the one you would name if somebody asked. Can it live? Answer the way Ezekiel did, and mean it: "O Lord GOD, thou knowest." Then remember who asked the question first. God did not lead Ezekiel into that valley to leave the bones lying there, and He has not stopped breathing life into what looks finished.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 211 is Seeing His Face (Revelation 22:3-4).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two