Week Five: Can These Bones Live?

There is a moment in every journey when the ache turns inward.
You are still moving, but it’s quieter now.
The striving fades.
The momentum softens.
You begin to realize—this isn’t about getting somewhere.
It’s about being met right here.

This is the valley.
Where what once was no longer holds.
Where the scaffolding has fallen away.
Where you begin to feel the weight of what’s been lost.

In Ezekiel’s vision, the Spirit brings him to a place where death is not hidden—
it is spread out across the landscape.
Bones. Dry. Scattered.
Not buried. Not mourned.
Just abandoned to time and sun and silence.

And then—God asks a question that has no easy answer:
“Can these bones live?”

Before we move toward the shadows—
before we trace the footsteps of the One who walks toward betrayal, silence, and the cross—
we are given this valley.

A space to remember:
This is not the first time we have stood in the presence of death.
Not the first time we have felt dry, scattered, unsure if breath would ever return.

We have known this ache in other forms—
in hospital rooms, in heartbreaks, in unanswered prayers,
in quiet disillusionment, in the long unraveling of what once felt sure.

This week, we are invited to bring all of it with us.
Not to solve it.
But to see it.
To stand among the bones of other seasons—personal and collective—
and listen again for the voice that calls them back to life.

We are not asked to answer.
Only to stand there.
To feel.
To notice.
To be honest about what has gone quiet in us.
And to stay open to what we cannot yet imagine.

Because something does begin to stir.
A breath.
A rattling.
A forming.
Not because we forced it—
but because God is not finished.

And here’s the grace: we do not do this alone.
Across towns, countries, hospital rooms, late-night kitchens, and morning commutes—
others are in this valley too.
Others are listening.
Others are daring to let breath meet them again.

We do not rise all at once.
But something in us is beginning to turn.
Something is re-forming.
The bones are not beyond reach.
The breath is not gone.

This is the week we let ourselves be found in the stillness.
This is the week we do not rush.
This is the week we let the Spirit breathe again—
into what we thought was done,
into what we had given up on,
into what only God can restore.

Let yourself be here.
Let yourself listen.
Let yourself breathe.

Even now.
Even here.
There is more life to come.