Dry. bones.
Disillusioned. brokenness.
Dreams. decayed.
Desires. dead.
The Hope I fanned relentlessly to keep aflame
Burnt out in the fire
A smoldering pile of ashes
I have. nothing. left. to. give.
My bones – sucked dry.
Stale, brittle.
Weary, cracked.
Unable to envision new life.
But from far away and from another time, I can hear Ezekiel prophesying, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37:4b-6)
And when I close my eyes to imagine the valley of the dead, where I have pitched my wind-blown tent in desolation, I can picture the absolutely-no-life-in-them bones coming together, with tendons, flesh, skin...and as I continue to look, I can see breath miraculously entering the once-completely-dead bodies as they come to life again. Resurrected. A vast army.
No longer defeated
But victorious
Hope-once-dead
Rises powerfully from the ashes
Can you see it too?
Transformation finds a way to determinedly write itself back into the Story.
Lauren Daigle sings in Come Alive (Dry Bones):
“But we know that You are God, Yours is the victory
We know there is more to come
That we may not yet see
So with the faith You've given us
We'll step into the valley unafraid, yeah
As we call out to dry bones, come alive, come alive
We call out to dead hearts, come alive, come alive
Up out of the ashes, let us see an army rise
We call out to dry bones, come alive”
We are dependent on God’s grace, aren’t we, for eyes of faith to see the miracle that He’s doing? To see the Story of Transformation that He is writing through our brokenness and deadness and inability to take another step forward. Our dry bones and dead hearts can live again. There really is more to come than we can imagine. Hope will rise yet again when our Resurrection God breathes Life to rekindle the extinguished fire we couldn’t keep aflame without Him.
As weary sisters in this valley of dry bones, let us reach for each other’s hands and rise together anew as part of our God’s resurrected army.
What has been your experience with the valley of dry bones?
When our youngest son was hospitalized with a severe brain infection just before we adopted him eight years ago, we didn’t know how much of him God was going to bring back to life again. After 6 days in a coma, he had lost virtually all of his functions. We knew He could do a miracle and bring him fully back to life like Lazarus. But we also knew He might not choose that route and our son might not be able to communicate with us for the rest of his life. We are grateful for the ways that God did bring healing as well as for the ways that “Unfinished” for our son means a life of dependence that is teaching all of us more about dependence on our God of the Resurrection.