Ezekiel 37

Ezekiel was a prophet in the Old Testament, and God passed many important things through him to the people of Israel. In Ezekiel 3, Ezekiel is out in the desert and God speaks to him. He directs him to a pile of bones, and asks him something we humans would call probably call a ‘stupid question’.
“Son of Man, can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3)
Ezekiel decided to not to take chances and answers simply,
“Oh Lord God, you know”. (Ezekiel 37:3)
Verses 4 to 9 finish the rest.
God made the dead bones come to life. Out of a pile of death, He created new life.
He goes on to tell Ezekiel
“Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open up your graves, O my people and I will bring you to the land of Israel”. (Ezekiel 37:12)

God promises the Israelites He will revive them. They may be defeated and crushed and broken, even dead, but nothing is impossible for Him.

The desert is a place of death in Arizona, no less than in the middle east where Ezekiel had his encounter. Bones are all that is left of many people here, and hundreds of sets of bones each year are collected by the mortuary. Bones of Mexican and Latino men, of women, of children who were for the most part fleeing involuntary and NAFTA-imposed poverty to seek a better life. It is estimated that hundreds more bodies are never recovered.

However, God promises a resurrection. Death is an integral part of the inhuman border policy that is in effect, yet God is more powerful than death. He is more powerful than injustice. Neither injustice nor death have the final word. The people we leave water bottles for, and the people who come into our camp, and the people in Nogales who are served by No More Deaths and other similar groups- many lives are saved and because of our small efforts some do escape death. We continue to do the best we can to help people not die, as well as challenge border and trade policies that drive them to such conditions.

Others though we cannot help, and their bodies end up in the Sonora. However, God is always with His people, in death as well as in life. God can and does raise the dead. He raised Himself through His Son, from the dead. He raises the mistreated and uplifts the downtrodden. He is the ultimate source of hope, there is no other.

There will be justice one day in Arizona and in Mexico, just as there will be in Palestine and Iraq and Chechnya and Tibet and Colombia and inner city Winnipeg and every part of the world that is oppressed by violence and exploitation and addictions and poverty. God can replace and make alive what human greed, cruelty and stupidity have destroyed. We may not know when the Second Coming will be, but we do know that neither death or injustice will triumph. He will. Satan does not have the final word. He does.