In the era of physical distancing as the community responds to the COVID 19 infection we are enduring challenges that would have been previously inconceivable. While most of us recognize that the long-term health and well-being of the community will be realized through this dramatic action, we are keenly aware of what it costs us. Spiritually, socially, politically and economically our view of the world has been challenged and shaken. We want to be hopeful. Yet, sometimes, all we can muster is wishful thinking. Where do we find hope, when all we see is what we’ve lost?

Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones is a picture of what hope looks like. The hope is constituted in the promise of God. It is God’s gracious work in our community that brings life out of death and hope out of despair.

Ezekiel 37:1-14

When we are caught in the middle of an impossible situation, one for which we have no experience and no road map, we can often lose heart. It is especially easy to feel stuck and discouraged. In these moments, the paralysis we feel can limit our view of the world around us. We can get stuck in old ways of viewing the world. We may yearn for the old or familiar, not necessarily because we think it is superior. We find comfort in it simply because it is familiar.

The text from 1 Samuel reminds us that when we align our self with God's vision, we become open to seeing new possibilities. In the era of COVID 19 and physical separation, a time that is unprecedented in our experience, we need to align our self with how God is at work and the vision that God has for what comes next.

In the time of social distancing, the experiences that are immersed in community become difficult to sustain. This time of crisis calls us to expand our understanding of worship. It would be easy to say that it isn’t worship because we don’t feel the presence of our church family. I’m beginning to think that this perspective is more about us and our own expectations than what the grace of God is able to do in us. The fact that we don’t feel the experience in the same way doesn’t mean that in this time God can’t still connect us through the experience of live streaming worship. Are we willing to open our hearts to experience worship in a new way? Are we willing to see how God can come to us, heal us and restore us, even when we feel alone? In some respects, these questions are at the heart of the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan women at the well.

Do you ever feel like you want to hit the reset button on life? It would be nice when we feel painted into the corner to reboot life like we reboot our devices. Sometimes these reboots overcome personal mistakes. At other times they give us a fresh start from a past that plagues us. In our text this week we see something different. The Pharisee Nicodemus is so cemented into a particular mindset and understanding of how God always works that he is unable to entertain any other possibility. Jesus challenges Nicodemus to his very core. As difficult as it was for Nicodemus, there is a word of hope for us. Jesus doesn’t shake our core as an arbitrary or punitive act. Jesus’ ground-breaking ministry in our world was an act of grace that is meant to give us all a fresh start. It gives us a spiritual reset button.