These Dry Bones

I’m getting older now. My bones creak when I get out of bed or as I come down the stairs, especially after spin class or a weight workout. My muscles rebel and spasm. My instructor explains to me that they are waking up. I should have left them asleep. These old bones have become dry.

Have you ever come across the dried up carcass of an animal? Yeah, me neither, but I slept in a Holiday Inn once. Actually, I’ve only seen dried up cattle carcasses in old westerns, you know the gunslinger type movies. Why am I rambling on about dry bones? This is the mental image that is captured in my thoughts as I read Ezekiel 37:4-6.

I’ve wondered through that valley of dry bones a time or two in my spiritual walk. It’s a gray and dusty place. The winds howl across the sand that stirred up a heated dirt devil in my life. My heart felt as brittle as the dried up snail shells that littered the desert floor. My soul thirsted for cooling water to be dripped upon it. I was parched from wondering aimlessly in the heat of the barren wastelands.

“As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God.” Psalm 42:1 NLT.

We were created with this longing for God. God placed eternity in each and every heart as He created us.

“Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT.

I began my writing journey in that land of dry bones. I didn’t recognize it yet, but I was starving my soul. I needed to be fed the Bread of Life, yet I was filling it with processed bread of the world. I was chasing after worldly treasure and priceless gems, but all I collected was fool’s gold. I needed more. Finally, because of weariness and dehydration, I fell to my knees and cried, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” (Thank you King David for Psalm 51)

On my knees, bowing in humility as I acknowledged my true need before my Maker. God heard my cry and felt my emptiness. His Spirit hovered over my void, then He spoke. God spoke words of life into these dry bones. He activated movement. Bones began to rattle again. The Lord God inflated my lungs with His breath. My spirit began to live again. Not only live but soar above the grayness I had become accustomed to. Spiritual faith muscles strengthened and activated my bones. God clothed me with skin. He took off the wardrobe of the world that I had begun to wear, and He draped me with the robes of a princess, His princess, for I was and am and always will be His daughter.

With awakened muscles and tendons, God stood me up and led me to my computer keyboard. “Now write,” He commanded. “Write what?” I inquired. “Just start, I will tell you what to type,” God directed. I turned to Matthew chapters 1 and 2, and Luke chapters 1 and 2. We were approaching Christmas so I thought why not. What I would realize, writing helps me understand the fingerprint and the movement of God in my life. When I don’t understand or when it “seems” like He is silent, I write. I delve deep into the Word of God. His Word becomes rhema to me. It becomes His spoken word, and it brings answers to my questions, water to my dryness, and life to weary bones.

Are you wandering through the valley of dry bones? God wants to navigate you through this wasteland. He created you for more than this emptiness. He created you with eternity built into your heart. He is what you are seeking. Bow now. He will make your old bones rattle again.

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