Can These Bones Live?

“Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” (—from Ezekiel 37) I’ve known times in my life when it felt like I was dead…like a barely animated corpse just going through the motions, waiting on my body to match my spirit and collapse into a heap of dust. Living can be hard like that. Life can go on for a long time feeling jagged and raw. I think about the story of Ezekiel’s mystic vision…the valley of dry bones, and it strikes me between the eyes with a weird sense of hope. Weird because we are often not spared from the crushing hardness of life, but hopeful because when all seems lost, something as familiar as breath swoops in to resurrect us. I’ve never gone along with the saying, “God will never give you more than you can handle”…for a lot of reasons…but mainly because I’ve lived through seasons of having more than I can handle. Maybe it would be helpful to reframe the way we perceive God. Can we go from thinking about God as a separate entity that “gives” us situations just to see what will happen, to experiencing God as a living essence that functions like breath within us? That essence and breath fills us, loves us, and animates us, to the point where it’s difficult to determine where we end and it begins. If you’re feeling like death warmed over today, take comfort in the fact that you are not alone, but try taking more than comfort. Try taking a breath. Feel that familiar sense of air filling your lungs? That’s how close God is and has always been to you…literally at the center of your being. You can get up. You can breathe. You can live.

Art by Abraham Rattner (American, 1895–1978), Valley of Dried Bones. Lithograph