DRY BONES
God speaks His resurrection life into our broken dreams
We took turns laying on the cold hospital floor next to my dying mother - the woman who had been my living example of faith.
This was not my first experience at dwindling hope -nor would it be my last- but it was where I learned that the deepest expectations of the soul can rest soundly in God’s gentle hands.
Living in a physical state, we tend to pin hopes on tangible things we can keep within reach, but they soon slip away in the certain uncertainty of this broken world.
Loved ones fall ill. Bank accounts drain. Marriage unions are severed and urgent calls wake us from our slumber.
Some days it seems that the blessings God has given are being ripped from our trusting hands. As people of faith, we appear to be destined for stoic despair, but the God of all hope stands near and invites us into the miracle of His resurrection.
Just as Israel’s prophet, Ezekiel, was humbly hesitant to assume the best when asked if a valley full of dry bones could live again, we too sometimes lower our expectations for good things to come to life in the midst of our empty seasons.
God’s reply to Ezekiel echoes across the centuries to His people today, “Prophesy!...Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!… I will make breath enter you and you will come to life…then you will know that I am the Lord.” (Ezk 37:4-6)
For only the One True Living God Who spoke the universe into existence has the right and reputation for bringing the dead back to life.
And He asks us, in our darkest times, to trust Him enough to agree. As we speak His Words in the face of impossibility, He assembles our faith anew, bone by bone, until His strength becomes the marrow of our being.
And He asks us, in our darkest times, to trust Him enough to agree.
Infused with inexplicable hope, we stand tall to see beyond the somber here and now to the greater forever will be.
And in that dark valley of scattered remains, arises a vast army, called to an undefeatable life by our Creator,
“the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” Romans 4:17b niv