The wind blows today. I hear it in the hollow of my chimney, the way it rushes through the emptiness and makes that haunting noise.

My tall grass beside the patio rustles and bends. Those pines sway and the tops of them wave. A shimmy shake.

I sit on the couch while little ones rest and read the craziest thing.

There’s this guy named Ezekiel, and he’s a servant of the Lord. God’s hand was on him and one day He shows him something he’ll never forget. Ezekiel finds himself in this valley and it was full of bones. I mean, they were strewn everywhere, and they were dry and bleached by the sun.

I pause and think about the words and I can picture all this in my imagination. That dusty valley out in the middle of nowhere. Heaps of bones. I feel dry inside.

I keep reading. God asks Ezekiel a question. Ezekiel talks with God:

And He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”

Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.   

And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” 

I look up in time to see a brown leaf topple across the yard. And I wonder at a God who can make dead things live. A God who breathes life into dust and fills the empty voids. 

And I know that emptiness. How nothing of this world really satisfies. And how there’s no amount of stuff that will make me happy, because I’m always needing just a little bit more.

And I know that dead feeling. Sometimes the ugliness of the world and the struggles in a day can suck the life right out. And I need filling. And in God’s Word, I discover that there’s a reason for all the hallowed out places. Because there’s a God sufficient, a real Person who aims to fill us up and satisfy.

And I know this but I keep forgetting. So, I come looking for Him everyday. I come for the filling. And I find Him, the One I’m starved for.

The wind outside rattles the gutters.

He breathes into me His life. His covering over me is grace and I feel full again.Whole again. These dead bones living.

(reading this morning from Ezekiel 37)