The Bone Farm Memorandum

It was in a Vineyard worship service back in 2007 that a line from the chorus went something like, I want to see you and be where you are Lord. We sang the hypnotic melodic mantra over and over. I remember thinking; do these people know what they are singing? At that moment I said under my breath, where are you Lord? I didn’t sense that He was even in the building. I heard in my spirit the answer to that question. “I am in My Word; in the Law and the Prophets, the Psalms and the Proverbs. I am the Gospel, the Acts and the New Testament letters. I am the Genesis and the Revelation. If you stay in my Word and My Word stays in you, you will be where I am. It is there that you will see Me and know Me.” I noted the moment in a notebook and I encourage anyone who is waiting on a visitation from the Lord to keep one handy, just like you do when you are expecting important information over the phone. For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.  Heb 4: 12.  If a person stays preoccupied with scripture and is in continual communication with the Almighty, those conversations become one with the marrow in the bones. When His word becomes part of a person through meditation, memorization and recollection then there is in some fashion the resurrecting power of life as we now know it and afterward in the grave also. Forgive any mystical comparison but His word stays in your dead bones until He Himself calls it back to Himself. His word and your bones in that respect are so attached that you become inseparable. So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper whereto I sent it.  Isaiah 55:11.  Remember Elisha’s bones? If there is in a sense more prosperity in the bones of a saint who has gone on already, how much more is there in those of us who are alive and remain. My father’s body is mostly decomposed by now in a one bedroom underground bone condo in a fancy West Toledo landfill called Ottawa Hills Memorial Cemetery. Cleo and Beatrice LaVigne have a piece of land in a neighborhood together with strangers of both worlds. As for me, I’m still alive and remain ambulatory, above ground, like a living sign or a grave marker. As Paul once wrote, I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. Gal 2:20. To the casual visitor I look in fair shape on the outside as I remain upright with some brief but yet appropriate information chiseled on the face. Life and age have not worn away the truth that lies beneath. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is just a grave site. In some respects the only thing we have going for us is the resurrection; that final event that will disturb this otherwise comfortable repose and will ultimately ruin the handiwork of both mortician and grave digger. Another song says that soon and very soon we are going to see the King. When He comes, the tune goes on to say, there will be no more crying there. I don’t know about you but the absence of doctors, bankers and elite politicians alone thrills me right down to the core. Some may think me disrespectful as I have such little regard for the bones of the dead but we are nothing more than a collection of nerves and organs that are temporarily housed along with our soul, inside a shell of skin, and a very thin shell at that. We may as well shed that easily bruised and notoriously selfish nature as soon as possible and put on Christ. That would be as in, Christ “in” ( bones included ) you, the hope of glory.