Can God Breathe Life into What Feels Completely Dead?

Ezekiel 37 and hope beyond what we can restore ourselves

By Pastor John Erickson

Have you ever looked at something in your life and thought, I don't even know where to begin?

Maybe it was a relationship that had been broken for years. Maybe something you worked so hard to build fell apart. Or maybe you went through a season of loss, and now the person you were before that season feels like somebody you barely remember.

It's one thing to ask God to help us with something that is struggling.

It's another thing to stand in front of what feels completely dead and ask, "Can anything live here again?"

That's the question at the center of Ezekiel 37.

I have an embarrassing memory from my first days at Bible college. My resident advisor, Peter, was showing me around when I told him I had never read the Old Testament and did not really like it. I considered myself a New Testament man. Why spend so much time on the rest?

Peter later became a good friend, and I served under him in Colorado. He liked to tell me that, after that conversation, he would have picked me as the freshman most likely to drop out. I do not remember sounding quite as bad as he remembers.

I have come a long way since then. Passages like this one are part of why. The prophets give us honest pictures of grief, hope, and a God whose restoring power exceeds ours.

The Valley Wasn't Just a Bad Day

Ezekiel was a prophet living in exile. God's people had suffered a national catastrophe. Jerusalem had fallen, the temple had been destroyed, and many of the people had been taken far from home.

They weren't simply having a rough season. Their entire understanding of their identity and future had been shaken.

God had made promises to them. So how were those promises supposed to work now?

In Ezekiel 36, God speaks about restoration. He promises to give his people a new heart and a new spirit-to replace hearts of stone with hearts of flesh.

Then comes an unforgettable vision.

God takes Ezekiel into a valley filled with bones. And not just bones. They are very dry bones.

This isn't the beginning of a medical problem. This is what remains long after life has gone. There is no human solution sitting in the next valley over.

God leads Ezekiel back and forth among the bones, and then asks him a question.

"Son of man, can these bones live?"

"Lord, You Alone Know"

I love Ezekiel's response.

He doesn't say, "Absolutely, God. No problem at all."

He also doesn't say, "That's impossible. Have you seen these bones?"

He says, "Sovereign Lord, you alone know."

I think that's a beautiful posture of faith.

Sometimes we make faith sound like being completely confident about an outcome that we haven't actually been promised. We tell ourselves we have to sound certain, because uncertainty would mean we aren't trusting God.

But Ezekiel doesn't pretend to have the answer.

He knows that he cannot bring those bones back to life. And he knows that the Lord is not limited by what Ezekiel can accomplish.

So he places the question where it belongs.

God, only you know.

Maybe that's a prayer some of us need to learn. Instead of forcing ourselves to declare exactly how everything will turn out, we can acknowledge the limitations of our vision and trust God's power and wisdom.

Restoration Is God's Work

God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones.

What follows sounds almost like a scene from a movie. There is a rattling sound. Bones come together. Tendons and flesh appear. Skin covers them.

But there's still a problem.

They have bodies, but they don't have breath.

So God tells Ezekiel to speak to the breath, and breath enters them. They stand on their feet-a vast multitude alive again.

The connection to God's earlier promise is important. In Ezekiel 36, he promised a new spirit. Here, restoration is complete only when the breath comes.

The Hebrew words for breath, wind, and spirit are closely connected. The picture is not merely one of physical repair. It points to the life-giving work of God's Spirit.

And that's something we need to remember. We can work on ourselves. We can make wise choices, apologize, rebuild trust, seek help, and do the hard work of healing.

Those things matter.

But the deepest kind of restoration is not something we manufacture by trying harder. Ezekiel's vision turns our attention to what only God can do.

God Sometimes Restores in Stages

There's another detail I don't want us to miss.

The bones don't go from scattered to fully alive in one sentence. First they come together. Then the bodies form. Then breath enters.

I think this is an important picture for people who are discouraged by the process of growth.

We want to pray, wake up the next morning, and discover that every painful thing in our lives has been resolved. But sometimes healing includes awkward, unfinished stages.

We can make progress and still not be where we hope to be.

I learned a small lesson about patience after taking up whittling. My knives needed sharpening, so I bought a whetstone and decided to sharpen all the kitchen knives while watching the Olympics. There were about eight waiting beside me. I had high hopes.

After an hour of careful, messy work with water and the stone, I finally had one knife sharp enough to cut paper. One. I looked at the rest of the knives and laughed. I had wanted sharp knives. What I had was a sharp knife.

A little nick can take far longer to work out than you expect. That does not explain every painful season, but it reminds me how quickly I want the result without the process. In restoration, too, I need patience and a willingness to keep bringing my unfinished life to God.

That doesn't prove God has forgotten us.

At the same time, we should be careful not to turn this passage into a guarantee that every broken earthly circumstance will be repaired exactly the way we want. God tells Ezekiel that the bones represent Israel, a people who say their hope is gone. The vision is first a promise of God's restoration of his people.

And as followers of Jesus, we recognize in it a powerful picture of our need for his Spirit and his life.

What Valley Are You Standing In?

Is there an area of your life you have quietly written off?

A relationship. A calling. Your sense of hope. Your ability to trust.

Maybe you haven't talked to God about it because, at this point, it feels ridiculous even to ask.

You can be honest about how dry the bones look.

You don't have to pretend you know exactly how God will work, or when. Ezekiel didn't.

But you can bring what feels dead into God's presence and say, "Lord, you alone know."

There are things we cannot bring back to life.

But our hope is not limited to what we can accomplish. We serve the God who gives breath.