For many people, life has become as dull and despairing as death. We suffer from spiritual inertia. We have allowed ourselves to be paralyzed by shallow beliefs and shackled by the strong chains of discouragement. We have permitted the sacred and holy to be eclipsed by the secular and profane. Hearts that were once gay have suddenly become heavy. Men who were once optimistic have become pessimistic. Many who were once willing to greet tomorrow with a cheer, now regard the future with nervous anxiety.

What we have here are powerless people who live in the night of spiritual darkness. It is a spiritual calamity- a dead situation. It is people whose spirit and life has dried up and the artesian springs of their souls has ceased to flow. They are, in essence, like a desert without a living stream of water. They are spiritual carcasses roaming around in the night-ness of their wretched existence.

Not only have they lost confidence in our world, but they have also lost faith in themselves and in God. They have become like zombies-carcasses with no life, dry bones in the valley, the walking dead. Dead, but not dead dead, if you will. The body is alive, but void of spirituality; form without substance. They are like thousands of folks today who have allowed prosperity and privilege to destroy their spirit; destroy their lives ? people with everything to live on and nothing to live for; the living dead; people with the stint of death on them ready for the open grave.

Well, the question is, can the spiritually dead be made alive? Can the spiritually bankrupt live again?

If you want life, you must come to the awareness that in order to cope with life's many complexities, life itself demands you draw meaning for your life from something greater within and beyond yourself-a higher source. That source of power that satisfies and enables victorious living is known as God. When the breath of Almighty God moves in upon you, new life is restored to dry bones. When He blows, we are enabled to keep going even when we feel we cannot take another step. When the wind of God's Spirit blows-bones move. Are you living or are you among the dead?

Rev. Saundra L. Washington, is an ordained clergywoman, social worker, and Founder of AMEN Ministries She is also the author of two coffee table books: Room Beneath the Snow, Poems that Preach and Negative Disturbances, Homilies that Teach.