Ezekiel 37:3 “He asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ I said, ‘Sovereign LORD, you alone know.’"
My thoughts are scattered and my mind takes me back to the month of June, 2015, and all that occurred. It seems like a distant nightmare, that soon I should wake up and everything will be fine, but the dream was real and I am now living with the fallout that has occurred. I have joined a club that I never wanted to join, in fact, I had never even met anyone who belonged to the club of those who have lost a child. I feel like my world has stopped and my life has withered up and died. I am in a desert wasteland, wandering around with a parched and longing soul that can never be quenched or satisfied. I cannot forge ahead with another Bible study or more prayer; it just doesn’t work. It is much easier to try and do something to fix myself than it is to trust in a Living God who can pour into me exactly what I need that will be the healing balm of Gilead my spirit longs for. I know about the doctrine of individual resurrection; it has meaning, but I would rather work for God than believe in Him. Has any spiritual work been accomplished in me at all as a sense of hopelessness sets in and despair follows leading to discouragement? I feel as though I have died inside and there is no hope for me.
The rest of the scripture says, “Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, '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.’" (v. 4-6) Ezekiel is proclaiming God’s pledge to reassemble Israelites from the world and restore the nation of Israel to life. God promises this same resurrection to all of His children; He promises spiritual regeneration to all who are dead in their sins. We can only mask these longings for a time, but these feelings of emptiness serve the purpose of pointing me to the only One who can satisfy the desires of my heart, my only sufficiency who can ultimately fill up this empty hole; everything else is a vain attempt to fill my longing; it falls short and is nothing but a shallow temporary brush stroke. When I think of the power of this scripture, the promise that God will attach tendons to the flesh of my dry bones, that He will cover me with skin, that He will put breath in me and that I will come to life, is truly the most encouraging vision I could ever imagine, because it only the Lord that can do this.
1 Corinthians 3:7 says, “So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” There is nothing I can do to nurture my soul, there is no condition that I can create in my life that causes me to come to life. The only thing that I can do is plant my roots deeply, established in good soil and then prepare myself to grow when God creates the perfect mixture of sunshine and rain in my life. As much as I want to avoid them, the clouds, the rain, the storms all are necessary to create rainbows in my life. Gal. 6:9 says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Rain is essential to a farmer for the maturing of crops, but if a farmer rushes out and hastily harvests his crop before their time, he would destroy them. He has to wait. Just like the farmer, we need to be patient in waiting for the Lord to mature us; we need to recognize that it takes time for growth to happen and that it takes spending time with the Lord for Him to wake me out of my sleep and to raise me up so that I can become healed and made whole.
– Melody
