After I read Ezekiel 37 last week, the images were on auto replay in the following days. I could almost see Ezekiel looking out over a valley FULL of dry, dead bones that belonged to the unburied dead, left as food for scavenging birds. (Awful image, I know.) When God asked Ezekiel if the bones could live, Ezekiel had no reason to think that they could live. However, Ezekiel had hope in God and said (v.3), “Lord God, You Yourself know.” Next, God tells Ezekiel to “prophesy over the bones” and to tell them to “hear the word of God” (v.4). Ezekiel prophesied over them, and dry bones began to rattle and come together. I can almost hear the rattling, can’t you? Then God gave the bones tendons, flesh, and skin. God was doing a new thing, but the bodies did not yet live. God then told Ezekiel (v.9): “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘The Lord God says this: “Come from the four winds, breath, and breathe on these slain, so that they come to life.’” Ezekiel prophesied and breath entered the bodies and “they stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.” (v.10)

Commentaries tell us that the bones represented the house of Israel who had forsaken the Lord their God and chased after idols of other nations. God allowed them to be exiled (several times), and many died in captivity. Perhaps, Ezekiel even saw some of them fallen along the way. Their disobedience had led them to the valley of dry bones. The spiritual truth here is that God will one day redeem His chosen people. In verse 14, God says: “And I will put My Spirit within you, and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done it,” declares the Lord.’” As believers, let us give thanks that we have been adopted into the family of God’s chosen people, bought with the price of our Savior’s blood.

I think there are personal applications because each of us has dry bones in our valleys. Sometimes, our bones have names: failure, broken relationships, unforgiveness, anger, hurts, unmet needs, inadequacies, prodigal children, death, illness, addictions, sinful tendencies… But God wants to do a new thing in our lives, too. He invites us to look at our dry bones through His eyes. We can trust that our God knows the way ahead for each of us and that He is the God of impossible things. We may only see dry bones, but the Lord over all things and all people sees life. Jeremiah 29:11-13 reminds us: “‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. ‘Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. ‘You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.’” 

Lord, help us to trust You and to speak Your Word over the dry bones in our lives. Holy Spirit, come and breathe life into them. Help us to be ever listening for the rattling of dry bones. Charles Spurgeon said it this way: “Since, apart from the Spirit, we are powerless, we must value greatly every movement of his power. Notice, in this account of the vision in the valley, how the prophet draws attention to the fact of the shaking and the noises, and the coming of the sinews and the flesh, even before there was any sign of life. I think that, if we want the Spirit of God to bless us, we must be on the watch to notice everything he does.”