I love the old Randy Travis song: “Diggin’ Up Bones.” It is a great reminder that sometimes things we thought were buried in our past…really aren’t. And when these memories surface like some old ghost walking through our life, we feel the pain and heartache from those old memories as if they were happening in our present. And as the refrain of that old song reminds us, we’re diggin’ up bones…diggin’ up bones…exhumin’ things that’s better left alone… (I know you sang that)
Anyway, these moments in our lives sometimes come unbidden. We are reminded of our past by a smell, a phrase someone says, or maybe we are just in a melancholy mood…whatever the reason, we unearth those old regrets, mistakes, or traumas we have tried to bury deep in our past and we begin mulling over them…chewing on them like a dog chews a bone. There can be something both sobering and redemptive in on our past mistakes or regrets…as long as we don’t stay in our past. We can learn so we don’t repeat but if we stay, we are harming ourselves more than the original event we regret or the mistakes we have made.
For those who try to live a Christian faith, our faith has a lot to say about the dead, dried up parts of our past that we have tried to bury but keep coming back to life like an old worn our zombie. In fact, I think Ezekiel 37 shows us that God cares a great deal about dried up old bones. In this passage, God leads Ezekiel, a prophet of God to a valley that is filled with dried up old bones. I would imagine it is a desolate and haunting sight to see. And while there are no bones or bodies now, I am reminded of our many Civil War battlefields, and they are haunting in their own way. But I digress…God brings Ezekiel to the valley of dried bones and what we see is that God does not leave the bones there as they are but breathes new life into them. God raises them up and gives them hope and purpose again.
When I think about all God did to those bones, I realize that even the dead bones that litter my own life are not beyond the redeeming power of God. And God will redeem them all but I have to not only bring them before God, I also need to do the work of counseling and reflection and those parts of my life will not only be healed but redeemed. Even Jesus does not shy away from our past. A good thing since he came because of our past. The cross of Christ is the ultimate confrontation with sin and death. Jesus’ resurrection is the promise we have that what was once dead can be brought back to life. Even Paul teaches that in I Corinthians 5:17: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
So, why do we dig up bones, the unhealed memories of our past, in the first place? I think it is because we think forgiveness equals forgetting. It doesn’t. Bringing back those buried bones means we are able, with help, to finally heal those buried bones. Here’s the thing: buried things need the light of God’s love to heal. Kept in the dark they only fester. If you are struggling and find yourself “diggin’ up bones” as Randy Travis sang about…take them to the foot of the cross and your counselor so you can work through them and truly bury them for good.
Peace,
Beth
In case you want to listen to Randy Travis singing “Diggin’ Up Bones” here is a link that will take you to hear the song…
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