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When the World Feels Like Dry Bones – Sunday, 3/22/2026

Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 37:1-14

Have you ever driven through Monroe on a gray February morning, looked around, and just felt… flat? Maybe it's after a hard season — a job loss, a health scare, a relationship that quietly fell apart — and the world just feels like it's running on empty. The ancient prophet Ezekiel describes a vision that might sound strange at first: he's standing in a vast valley, and it's filled with dry, scattered bones. Not a dramatic battlefield scene, but something quieter and more unsettling — the remains of a people who had simply lost all hope. It's a picture that, if we're honest, many of us recognize.

God asks Ezekiel a strange question standing there in that valley: "Can these bones live?" It's not a trick question. It's an invitation to dare to imagine something that looks impossible. And Ezekiel's answer is brilliant in its honesty — he doesn't say yes, and he doesn't say no. He says, essentially, "You tell me, God." There's real wisdom in that kind of humility, in admitting that we don't have the power to answer a question that big on our own.

What's remarkable about this story is what happens next. God doesn't wave a magic wand and make everything instantly better. Instead, God invites Ezekiel to speak — to call out to those bones, to breathe hope into a hopeless-looking situation. The dry bones rattle and come together, but they need breath, they need spirit, before they truly live again. This is a story about how new life comes not just from above, but through the act of showing up, speaking, and breathing life into places that feel dead.

In Monroe and the surrounding communities, there are places that can feel like dry bones — struggling businesses on Main Street, families carrying invisible grief, neighbors who have quietly given up. The message of this ancient story is that God is not absent from those places. In fact, that's exactly where God tends to show up most powerfully. The question isn't whether new life is possible. The question is whether we dare believe it — and whether we'll be part of calling it forth.

Reflection Question: Where in your own life, or in your community, does hope feel dried up right now — and what would it look like to dare to believe that new life is still possible there?

Action Step: Take a short walk or drive through your neighborhood this week with fresh eyes. Notice one place or person that seems to be struggling, and say a quiet prayer of hope for that place or person by name.

Prayer: God of wind and breath, there are places in our lives and in our world that feel like dry valleys. Come close to those places today. Breathe your life into what seems lost, and give us the courage to believe that nothing is beyond your reach. Amen.