Breathe

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘Come, O breath, from the four winds!
Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again.’”
(Ezekiel 37:9 NLT)

Ezekiel was gazing into a valley of bleached, dry bones – dry bones symbolizing the death of hope. The Lord had carried him to the despondent Jewish exiles sitting forlornly by a canal in Babylon. Their hopes and dreams were smashed. They were an exiled people in a foreign land. And then God gave his prophet a vision – a vision of restoration and “of peace, and not of evil, to give them a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).

As Ezekiel gazed at the dead, dry bones, the trees started rustling as the winds began to blow and the bones started to live again. Proof that scattered and desolate Israel would one day be united again in the land God had given to her.

The word used in this verse is ruach, which can mean wind, breath, spirit ,or the Spirit. Jesus used this word in John 3:5-8 while talking to Nicodemus about the need to be born again through the “water and the Spirit.”

Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:5-6 NKJV).

The same word is used in Genesis to describe God breathing life into Adam. Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed (ruach) into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Genesis 2:7 NIV).

His Spirit brings life. It is the Spirit that gives life …The words I speak to you are spirit and life (John 6:63 NLV).

Are you facing your personal valley of dry bones with what seems like nothing but death around you? Death of trust, death of dreams, death of hope?

Ask Him to give you a renewed breath. Open your Bible. Read. It may feel at first as though the words are falling on parched, barren earth, but don’t give up. His Word always brings new life. Press on. Soon you will hear the rustling of the trees as the four winds begin to blow and the sound of the dry bones in your life rattling as the Spirit passes over them bringing new life.

Breathe, breathe deeply, breathe in the new life and the hope He brings you.

The God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not (Romans 4:17 NIV)