Key Texts: Ezekiel 37:1-14
The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
I wonder if you have ever felt like Ezekiel, transported by a vision, looking out over a desolate valley full of bones. The bones are dry – very dry. There is no life here, only death. No hope. No dream. No future. No vision.
And then comes the question: “…can these bones live?”
And the answer Ezekiel gives is the only one that ultimately any of us can give:
“Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
As the Bible tells it, the bones can “live.”
Step by step, layer by layer, bone, muscle, flesh – the structure of the body is put into place but it is only with the coming of the Spirit, the Breath, that life moves through the lifeless.
I wonder if you have ever felt like Ezekiel, wondering if what has become dead, lifeless, can live again. Perhaps it is a dream, a hope, a relationship, a calling – you stand in that dark valley and wonder if there is any possibility of life moving through the lifeless.
I believe that in such moments, if we turn to the Divine, the life-giver, and humbly utter that statement in the form of a hopeful prayer, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know” then life can come: resurrection.
In hopeless, lifeless moments, turn to God.
Trust and hope and dream – and begin again – because the Sovereign God is not, as Jesus said, not the God of the dead but the living.
Find hope – and life – in the coming of the Spirit anew.
IGW3 - In God's Word, In God's Will, In God's Work 