Dry Bones

Do you ever feel like you have so much to do and so little time that you might as well not even try. Ever get that feeling that you are just failing at life? Sometimes, we feel worthless and trying--even living--seems hopeless.

How do you come back from those feelings? Praying is great, but even pouring our feelings out to God is sometimes not enough to assure our fragile human hearts that we are doing our best and that is enough.

One thing to remember is that we don't have to be enough. In fact, our humanity keeps us from being just that. If we were enough, we wouldn't have needed Jesus. If things were truly hopeless, we wouldn't have the promises of God waiting to be fulfilled when He is ready.

Look back to Ezekiel 37. The people of Israel were dead and in their graves. Nothing but dry bones were left. God told Ezekiel to command them to rise. He later told him to command wind to fill their lungs with breath, and when they were whole, but their bones were still in the graves, dry and useless, God told them He'd pull them from their graves and send them back to their land.

We can learn quite a few lessons from this, but the two I want to leave you with are these:

First, Ezekiel, despite knowing he was human and as such can't raise people from the dead, had enough faith in God to do as He asked when commanded to bring the bones back to life. He trusted and obeyed with an open heart regardless of His own thoughts or reservations.

Second, God was able to take completely dry bones that had been in the ground for a long time and had decomposed to where there was no skin and no tendons left, and He restored them completely. If God can take a nation and restore their bodies and hope after death, imagine what He can do for ours if we look to Him while we are still living.