Dry Bones
And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” Ezekiel 37:3
Not for lack of trying, but there is a lot in the book of Ezekiel that I do not completely understand. There is probably not another prophet in the Bible though that I’ve learned more from, and there’s a phrase in this chapter that is sort of the culmination of that learning for me, “O Lord, You know.”
A prophet passionately loves what is right; loves truth; hates falsehood and evil. That passion, improperly channeled, can be hasty and harsh. Knowing what is right and wrong, we can easily assume we also know the right way to fix it all, putting our self most foolishly and often disastrously in the position of doing the work our way instead of God’s.
I am 100% sure Ezekiel had some ideas about what to say and do about the chosen people of God who were walking in disobedience, and I’m just as sure that building what sounds like a mini fort and laying on his left side for 390 days and then turning over to his right side for another 40 days never crossed his mind as an option. So in the Valley of Dry Bones chapter, while the main point is so very clear- about who God is; about His character, I also see the heart of a prophet with his passion channeled rightly in verse 3. The Lord shows Ezekiel a valley full of dry, dead bones and he asks Ezekiel if these dry, dead bones can live. His answer was not impetuously: “Of course they can live!” Or presumptuously: “I have the power of God with me, I’ll make them live!” But instead, humbly: “O Lord God, You know.” His answer was that they can live only if You say they can. I know that You can and I know that You ultimately will, but I don’t know if you will right now and I don’t know exactly how.
I don’t know if you’ll deliver us from our enemies now or if you will do it 390 years from now. I don’t know if you will fulfill your promise of “making from me a great nation” now or if I’ll need to wait until my wife is 90 to even give birth and then not even be alive to question how You multiplied the people while allowing them to be enslaved for over 400 years. I ate from that tree and I don’t know if you will bruise the serpent’s head with my child or from my seed thousands of years later. I don’t know if “this generation shall not pass away before” means mine or someone else’s.
I don’t know if I’ll feel completely whole again after losing my spouse.
I don’t know if I will be cured of this disease in this lifetime.
I don’t know if I’ll get a good job.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get another full night’s sleep.
I don’t know if I’ll ever find someone to share my life with.
I don’t know how long I’ll be in this foster home.
I don’t know how long I will be in pain.
I don’t know if our country will remain free.
I don’t know if my elderly loved ones will survive the pandemic.
I don’t know which loud “side” I should be on.
I know that You can. I know that You will. But I don’t know how and I don’t know when.
If I knew how and when, you would not be able to shut me up about it. You’d not be able to turn my heart from it. That’s an easier time when that happens. So much easier, in fact, that some people fake it just to feel better; to feel like they have some sort of control. Incidentally, they can make a lot of money fleecing the flock or at least stir up strife among the believers in doing so. I give you, if you will, “88 Reasons Why the Rapture will be in 1988”, and one billion other prophetic books and posts on social media since then with absolutely no Biblical basis other than we know that it will happen one day and sometimes, not even that.
I’ll keep trying to know all that I am meant to know, but the things that I am completely soul-sure of are not changed by all the millennium charts and graphs in the world. I’m for charts, if it helps. I’m for learning all that I can. The chart itself thought doesn’t give me any comfort. If it did, I’d be getting comfort from the wrong place. All my hope is in this: that God will fulfill His promises. All of them. His promise to punish evil. His promise that He knows His own and His own knows Him. A promise that He will change my very heart so that it can know Him and fear Him. A promise that He will finish the work He started in me. A promise of the Spirit to guide me and keep me when I need to know the how and the when (along with so many more!). If my hope is there, you can’t shake it with threats of a deadly pandemic nor of accidental mark of the beast chipping nor anything else this broken world may afford.
Knowing the how and when is easier. But not knowing is sometimes the only opportunity to grow our faith and our complete trust and reliance on Him. So it’s not as if I’ll ever give up on the knowing. It’s just that if you ask me if a bunch of old dry bones can live, I can’t give you an answer that will make me famous. I can only say this- if God says that they will, they will. Maybe not in the way or the time we would expect them to, but they will. And when that simple answer brings me worry instead of peace, then I know I’ve stopped trusting Him.