Have you ever looked across the landscape of your live and seen barrenness? You see no signs of life in the situations you find yourself in. If hope is a confident expectation for good the opposite of hope must be despair. When God took Ezekiel into the valley full of dry bones he was showing Ezekiel a picture of despair. It was as if God was saying to Ezekiel, “No more pretending things are better than they are seem. Look around you on the whole surface of the valley there is nothing but very dry bones.” What a depressing picture!
One of the things I look for when I read the Scriptures is when God asks man a question. In my mind's eye I can see Ezekiel looking with despair at all these dry bones and trying to process the hopelessness that they represent when God asks him a question. “Son of man, can these bones live?” Ezekiel 37 Ezekiel's response was humble and wise he said, “O Lord God, you know.” First, he acknowledged Him as Lord then He addressed Him as God. From the perspective of a man there was no hope but Ezekiel was not addressing his answer to a man but to the Lord God. His response showed that he understood that the things that were impossible for him were not impossible for God.
There are situations in my life where God has invited me to participate in the work He is doing of making the impossible possible. This was one of those times in Ezekiel's life. God told him to prophesy over the dead dry bones and when he did he heard the rattling as he watched the bones come together. Then he watched as the sinews covered the bones and then flesh covered the sinews. Now he was in a valley of corpses because there was no breath in any of these bodies. I've been there. Places where I've walked with God believing He could do what I could not, only to find myself surrounded by corpses. There was the promise of life but not the evidence of it and all I knew was that I am surrounded by corpses. God, however was not finished and in the fullness of time He brought forth breath.
In those places of my life where all hope was lost God opened the grave and raised my dreams to life again. He did for me what I could not do for myself. “Without faith it is impossible to please him,for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”Hebrews 11:6 Ezekiel believed, why else would he be speaking to dry bones. His faith was not a feeling, instead it was evidenced by his response to who he believed God to be. Because God was the Lord he did as he was told he prophesied to the bones and then to the wind. He was rewarded for his faith by being part of God's miracle of taking a valley filled with dead dry bones and causing them to become an exceedingly great army.
O Lord Jesus, help me to see my life through the lens of faith. You are the Lord of life. Your are the Redeemer. With You nothing is impossible. You have invited me to be part of the work you are doing in my generation. Your word has told me that You have prepared good works in advance for me to do but they can only be accomplished by faith.
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