Day 260: Ezekiel 37, 38 and 39

Son of man, can these bones live? (Ezekiel 37:3)

In perhaps the best known portion of Ezekiel, the prophet is shown by the Lord a valley of dry bones. The picture is one of hopelessness and death. The bones are not only dead... they are long dead, bleached by the sun and dried with the passing of time. Son of man, can these bones live?

These dry bones communicate the idea of too late and lost cause. If these people ever did have any hope, even its memory is gone by now. They are long dead, and there is no one left to even mourn for them anymore. Son of man, can these bones live?

Then something happens. There comes a rattling sound as the bones rearticulate themselves into human shape; they are covered with tendons, flesh and skin in a reverse decomposition process, until all they lack is life itself. "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live." . . . and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet - a vast army (vv. 9,10).

Ezekiel's audience recognized themselves, an exiled people from a conquered nation, as hopeless as a valley filled with dried bones... except that God who breathes life even into dry bones can breathe life into an exiled nation as well.

Have you given up hope? Do your dry bones need the breath of life?