Have you ever felt so hopeless in your life that you feel like you are nothing but dry bones inside? I think of my friend who lost her 30 year old son recently and I’m wondering if she feels that way. Deeply empty, dry and hollow inside.
The LORD took Ezekiel to a valley and showed him a valley of dry bones. He had Ezekiel prophecy and the bones started adding tendons and ligaments and then flesh. But there was still no life in them.
The LORD had Ezekiel prophecy again and they came to life, a vast army. What was dead was no alive.
The LORD said that this is what Israel is like. They are currently a valley of dead bones. Not just dead but dry and lifeless. This is what sin had done for them. There was no hope for them in captivity.
But the LORD was going to restore them. He was going to breathe on them and they would come alive again. Not only that but they would return to their land as people out of their graves. A people that were in a sense “dead” but would now come to life.
Not only that but he would bring restoration. They had been a divided nation just like Germans had been and North Korea is even today. Israel too had been divided but when he was going to bring them back, he was going to make them one again. It would be a new day.
Not only that but he was going to make a new covenant with them, a covenant of peace. It would be an everlasting covenant this time where the first covenant had been temporary.
“My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be My people. When My sanctuary is among them forever, the nations will know that I, Yahweh, sanctify Israel” (v. 27-28).
What a beautiful picture of restoration. From death to life, from divided as a people to united, and then from a covenant of law to a new covenant of peace.
Their lives would literally be better after captivity and exile than it had been before. This is the restoration of God.
Let’s face it. We too have times where we feel like we are a valley of dry bones. Dead inside. Sometimes this is because of our own sin. Sometimes it is not. But we serve a God who in His time is able to restore us and breathe life into us again. Not only that but he can bring greater blessing than even before.
I don’t know about you, but I needed to read about that again.
