Dry Bones

Some days you walk through the valley of death. There are dry bones littering the ground all around you. Some are the remains of broken marriages, some are the dry husks of lives lived wrong. Some bones are all that is left after the ravages of disease or the pain of sin. Some days that is all you can see.

Praise God that He is walks with us.

God took Ezekiel to a valley filled with real dry bones. As Ezekiel looked around a valley full of death, I'm sure he was appalled. Jews were taught to avoid dead remains, and yet Yahweh had led him to world filled with death on every side. God spoke to Ezekiel about faith. Do you believe that I am the Life? Do you believe that I can bring these bones to life? Ezekiel must have had a great faith because he did believe. He did not bow down and become overwhelmed and inactive, no, he used the words God gave him and he called out for the bones to rise. And they did! The rattle must have been deafening as thousands of bones clanked together as they moved in obedience to God. It must have been mind-numbing to watch bodies being created from the inside out as tendons, muscles and flesh layered one upon the other. As a testiment to Ezekiel's obedience full bodies lay where only dry bones had been. But something was missing. LIFE

Just as Adam layed fully formed in the dust and was not yet alive, so these bodies had no life. Life came with the breath of God. At Ezekiel's call God exhaled and His warm, sweet breath rushed over them and through them and brought the miracle of life.

God then told Ezekiel that He longed to do the same thing for his beloved people. Out of disobedience and idolatry they had embraced death and fully pulled it's stink deep in their bones. They were a people of dry bones, cracked and brittle from their brush with sin and death. God's heart was for redemption. He longed to return the breath of life to them. He gave it first to Adam, who sold it for a forbidden fruit. God held out the longing of His heart to breath on them once again.

At Pentecost when a bunch of bumbling, lost disciples were still stumbling around confused and not sure where to go, God stepped in and breathed on them. It looked like fire, it sounded like a rushing wind and it breathed a new life into them. The Holy Spirit, the breath of Heaven, came powerfully into the hearts of everyone who would believe. It would melt the heart of stone and would transform everyone it touched.

God is waiting. Waiting for us to speak out and call His Spirit, His very breath, to blow across the dry bones around us. He longs for redemption and He waits to be asked.

Breath of Heaven, breath out on us and fill us with LIFE.