Dry. bones. 

Disillusioned. brokenness. 

Dreams. decayed. 

Desires. dead. 

The Hope I fanned relentlessly to keep aflame 

Burnt out in the fire 

A smoldering pile of ashes 

I have. nothing. left. to. give. 

My bones – sucked dry. 

Stale, brittle. 

Weary, cracked. 

Unable to envision new life.  

But from far away and from another time, I can hear Ezekiel prophesying, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37:4b-6) 

And when I close my eyes to imagine the valley of the dead, where I have pitched my wind-blown tent in desolation, I can picture the absolutely-no-life-in-them bones coming together, with tendons, flesh, skin...and as I continue to look, I can see breath miraculously entering the once-completely-dead bodies as they come to life again. Resurrected. A vast army. 

No longer defeated 

But victorious 

Hope-once-dead 

Rises powerfully from the ashes 

Can you see it too? 

Transformation finds a way to determinedly write itself back into the Story. 

Lauren Daigle sings in Come Alive (Dry Bones): 

“But we know that You are God, Yours is the victory 

We know there is more to come 

That we may not yet see 

So with the faith You've given us 

We'll step into the valley unafraid, yeah  

As we call out to dry bones, come alive, come alive 

We call out to dead hearts, come alive, come alive 

Up out of the ashes, let us see an army rise 

We call out to dry bones, come alive” 

We are dependent on God’s grace, aren’t we, for eyes of faith to see the miracle that He’s doing? To see the Story of Transformation that He is writing through our brokenness and deadness and inability to take another step forward. Our dry bones and dead hearts can live again. There really is more to come than we can imagine. Hope will rise yet again when our Resurrection God breathes Life to rekindle the extinguished fire we couldn’t keep aflame without Him. 

As weary sisters in this valley of dry bones, let us reach for each other’s hands and rise together anew as part of our God’s resurrected army.