Dry Bones

Someone asked me recently what my dreams were for Oscar.

I surprised myself when I said I didn’t really have any. In that moment I couldn’t think of one, other than just taking life as it comes.

The truth is, so many dreams and hopes for him have not come to pass. And I sit in the hard of that. So over time, expectations have quietly shrunk. It becomes easier that way. Safer.

Recently the old song Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones kept popping up throughout my day. It caused me to reread Book of Ezekiel 37 – the valley of dry bones.

Ezekiel 37 is about the vision of the valley of dry bones, a place where everything seems long dead and beyond hope. Yet in the story, God breathes life back into those bones.

I think many of us can find ourselves in places like that – places where life hasn’t unfolded the way we imagined and where dreams have quietly dried up over time.

But this is more than a story about dry bones, it is one about hope.

A reminder that even when dreams feel dead and dried up, even when expectations have been scaled back, God is not done.

Ezekiel 37 is an invitation to hope again. Not to ignore the hard, but to believe that dry bones don’t always stay dry.

And maybe hope begins with acknowledging the valley…and remembering that God still breathes life into places we thought were finished.

And maybe hope is simply this – trusting that even when our dreams feel over, God is still quietly at work.

Breathing life into dry bones.

“I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.” Ezekiel 37:14