God grabbed me. God’s Spirit took me up and set me down in the middle of an open plain strewn with bones. He led me around and among them—a lot of bones! There were bones all over the plain—dry bones, bleached by the sun.
He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “Master God, only you know that.”
He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones: ‘Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!’”
God, the Master, told the dry bones, “Watch this: I’m bringing the breath of life to you and you’ll come to life. I’ll attach sinews to you, put meat on your bones, cover you with skin, and breathe life into you. You’ll come alive and you’ll realize that I am God!”
I prophesied just as I’d been commanded. As I prophesied, there was a sound and, oh, rustling! The bones moved and came together, bone to bone. I kept watching. Sinews formed, then muscles on the bones, then skin stretched over them. But they had no breath in them.
He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man. Tell the breath, ‘God, the Master, says, Come from the four winds. Come, breath. Breathe on these slain bodies. Breathe life!’”
So I prophesied, just as he commanded me. The breath entered them and they came alive! They stood up on their feet, a huge army.
For Reflection:
This week, God invites us to recall what we have seen, heard, and experienced to remember His character. In Ezekiel's third vision, he finds himself among dry bones a true picture of desolation and then God’s breath reestablishes life infusing undeniable hope. Sometimes, I like to read the scriptures and let the scene play like a movie in mind, noticing things with my senses and getting curious about what I’m drawn to. In this scene, I’m watching Ezekiel’s face as he walks tentatively around an entire valley of dry bones. A shallow frown forms on his face as the vast sound of silence echoes the depths of hopelessness among these bones. In situations in my life where hope feels just out of reach, I look to see where God is. In this story, we find God standing at the ready to breathe life into these bones. I wonder about God’s face. Is He smiling? Do His eyes sparkle like ours do when we are about to witness something great? What are you curious about?
What do you notice about God? I see a God who creates life, a God who wants his people to know his name and the power that it embodies, a God who longs to refresh old dry bones with new energy, purpose and life to the full.
As a prophet, Ezekiel had the weighty task of delivering difficult messages to the people over and over again and I wonder if at this moment God is refreshing His soul with a vision of hope, renewal, and restoration.
I think about dry places in my life that need God’s refreshing. Come Holy Spirit, come bringing your fresh wind of hope. I think about some patterns lately that have me relying on my own strength and circumventing a possible connection with God. Come Holy Spirit, come renew my habits. I think about the “all out” pace of the world and my participation at that same speed that leaves me weary. Come Holy, Spirit come restore me.
Let us pray:
Lord, You know the areas in my life in desperate need of your strength and refreshment. Would you open my eyes to the ways in which you are already working in my life and the lives of others around me? Please awake my soul with your boundless love, mercy, grace, peace, and joy that I might find myself refreshed in YOU alone. Amen.
I wonder what the Lord might reveal to me if you sit with Him and lay out the dry (hard, messy, uncertain, discombobulated, weary) places in your life.
If God were to breathe fresh wind over my life, what might come alive?