by Clive"Yahshanti"Brown

Today, February 24th 2008, I got a sponsor, Steve. The first thing he told me was to join the group and I did.

I joined the Brocton Sunday morning group. Though it was a beginner’s discussion group the atmosphere was resplendent with the hope and experience shared through the insightful wisdom of the many old timers present. "God-incidentally the topic shared on was about HOPE".

I sat there in the midst of over one hundred alcoholics and addicts and listened to some of them share, by the time I had a chance it was the last call for anyone with a burning desire to share. And boy! did I have a burning desire. My response was about my last day of active use this time around. I reflected on that day when I sat in my friend Bart’s room in Northampton. I was getting high and could not get any higher because my spirit was dying. I was in the vicious clutches of utter darkness, despair, hopelessness and desperation. With nowhere to go but to continue my downward spiral to eventually fall into the bitter sweet embrace of death, I called on the God that I have known all my life but refused to acknowledge because of my adamant self-will.. I asked Him, to please show me a way out of the hell I was living.

My answer came from a voice inside my heart, or was it my head, or maybe it came from “outside of ME”. But regardless of where the voice came from it led me to read chapter 37, in the book of Ezekiel about the “valley of dry bones”. In reading this chapter, I placed myself and the state of my life at that moment in the context of the reading. Though it was not like “presto-chango”, I must say that I had the most profound “spiritual awakening” ever.

I saw how my life was comparable to being in “a valley of dry bones”. I was surrounded by people, places and things in a similar condition as me. Yet, I felt so hopeless and alone. Everywhere I looked around me, I wondered if life could again be restored in these the dry bones of my life. I surely did not know the answer, but God did. Just as God’s word came through the voice of Ezekiel’s obedience to prophesy life into the dry bones. I made a decision to trust, obey and hope in His direction and care. And listen with my heart to His voice daily so that I could rise anew from the valley that I was dying in.

Thank God that I’m sincerely trying to do that today. Looking around the room at the freshness of life in the faces of the people in the meeting, I knew God had answered my prayer. I marveled at the quiet magnitude of the powerful grace of God. I felt and saw the Spirit of God in this ironic juxtaposition of what my life was then and what it is now.