From Dry Bones to Hope

Ezekiel 37:1-14, Psalm 130

I love this Ezekiel scripture about the dry bones that come to life with a message of hope. When all else fails, when hope has dried up like these bones, God promises to bring them up from their graves and put the Spirit of the Lord in them and bring them home. Ezekiel is confronted by a valley of very dry bones of a horrible battlefield. God asks whether these bones can come to life. To this he replies, “Only you know.” He is noting that it would have to be through the power of God and the prophetic word. Ezekiel follows God’s directions and against all odds the bone comes to life. God intended this vision to answer the exiles despair. They felt like they were dead and buried. With wind, breath, and Spirit God promises to bring them to real life, like he’s done to the dry bones through God’s spirit in them.

In our Psalm passage the psalmist is waiting on God for divine redemption. One who is close to death hopes in God’s word pleading for God to hear. Yet there is hope for God’s forgiveness. While in the depth of suffering the psalmist repeatedly asserts hope that God will save not only himself but the community of Israel. So, he tells Israel to hope in the Lord for with the Lord there is steadfast love. The psalmist along with Ezekiel believe in God’s great power to redeem. He confidently boasts that God will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

What’s to be done in the meanwhile? The psalmist talks about an active waiting in hope – more than those who wait for the morning. This verse is meaningful to me since it brings up a memory of my son. When he was a toddler we told him he could no longer sleep in our bed. It became quiet so we went out to investigate whether he had gone to sleep and where. We found him at the window looking out into the dark night moaning, “Morning, Morning!”

When our lives seem to resemble the dry bones of Ezekiel where dryness seems to abound. When we have problems that don’t seem to go away and life seems very dark, we are in a waiting mode for the powerful God to answer. Let it be an active wait- waiting morning to come with the hope that God will bring the light of morning, and will bring new life out of the dry bones in our lives. Amen.

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