Scripture: Ezekiel 37:1–3 (NRSVUE)
Key Verse: “He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’” (Ezekiel 37:3)
Reflection:
Ezekiel does not wander into the valley. The hand of the Lord sets him down there, and then God leads him all around the bones, back and forth, until he has seen the whole of it. Two observations come out of that walk. There were very many, and they were very dry. Ezekiel is a priest by birth, shaped by a tradition that carefully regulated contact with the dead. Yet here, in a vision, God leads him through a valley filled with human bones. The very place a priest might have been expected to avoid becomes the place where God insists he look.
Only after Ezekiel has seen everything does God ask the question. “Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel has every reason to answer no. He also knows who is asking. So he says, “O Lord God, you know.” That answer is easy to mistake for evasion. It is closer to the most honest prayer available to someone standing in ruin. He refuses to manufacture confidence he does not have, and he refuses to close a question God has left open. The God who asks does not shame him for the answer. Grace in this valley looks like a God who will not let the prophet pretend, and who will not let the bones have the final word either.
Most of us are more practiced at the opposite. We walk past the dry places quickly. We call a strained marriage “fine,” a struggling neighborhood “just how it is,” and a shrinking ministry gets described in the language of the annual report, where every number has an explanation. Churches build whole cultures around not looking: the room nobody enters, the topic that ends the meeting, the decline we name only in euphemism. Avoidance feels like protection. In practice it is a decision, made without ever saying so, that the question has already been answered. Ezekiel’s valley refuses that decision. Before anything can live, someone has to see how dry it really is and say so in the presence of the God who asks.
Writing Prompt: Name one situation you have described as “fine” or “just how it is” for more than a year. Write what you would see if you walked all the way around it, slowly, the way God walked Ezekiel through the valley. What part have you been careful not to look at, and what has that carefulness protected you from?
Application: Go to one physical place tied to something you have written off, if you can do so safely. Walk through it slowly, without trying to fix anything. If you cannot visit the place, sit with a photograph or write a description of it. Then tell one person what you noticed.
Prayer: God, you walked Ezekiel past every bone. Walk me through what I have refused to see. I don’t have the faith to say yes, and I’m not ready to say no. You know. Keep the question open in me. Amen.