Daily Devotion

Selection Taken From:
A Year with God by R.P. Nettelhorst

Make this the year you let God's Word "dwell in you richly"---and marvel at the results! Each entry in this 365-day devotional features Scripture verses in which God speaks, accompanied by insights and applications to enhance your understanding. Learn what God says about hope and fear; perseverance and quitting; companionship and isolation; and more! 384 pages, softcover from Nelson, Copyright 2010.


Them Bones, Them Bones
The hand of the Loa) was on me, and He brought me out by His Spirit and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them. There were a great many of them on the surface of the valley, and they were very dry. Then He said to me, "Son of man, can these bones live?"
I replied, "Lord GOD, [only] You know."
He said to me, "Prophesy concerning these bones and say to them: Dry bones, hear the word of the Loa)! This is what the Lord Goo says to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you will live. I will put tendons on you, make flesh grow on you, and cover you with skin. I will put breath in you so that you come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD."
So I prophesied as I had been commanded. While I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. - Ezekiel 37:1-7 HCSB

Ezekiel, an exile himself, prophesied to the exiles living in Babylon. The people in exile felt empty, abandoned, and hopeless. Despite the words of Jeremiah and Isaiah, who had promised that they would return home one day, they still doubted. They were unable to see any further than their current pain. So once again, God revealed the future.

God granted Ezekiel a vision of a vast field, filled with bones, metaphori-cally standing for the exiled nation. Then God restored the bones to life, a vast army, and told Ezekiel that they represented the Israelites who were saying, "Our bones are dried up, and our hope is gone; we are cut off." God intended to resurrect them. That is, he would bring them home, to the land of Israel.

God doesn't go back on his promises. But he makes allowances for human fear and weakness. Sometimes we may fear that God has abandoned us. We may fear that we've been too bad, we've gone too far from his will, and that for us it is too late. God reassured the Israelites—even after hundreds of years of their going too far and after years of exile—that it wasn't too late. Like Israel in the days of Ezekiel, even when we're nothing but dried bones, God still has a plan for us.