Passiontide Reflection – Lent 5
READING: Ezekiel 37:1–14
A Valley of Dry Bones
I wonder if you have ever found yourself in a place that felt as though the life had drained out of it — a dry place.
Perhaps such a place does not arrive with a sudden crisis at all. Sometimes dryness creeps in quietly.
A couple who had been married for many years. In the early days their home was full of laughter, shared plans, and the small kindnesses that make a life together. They talked long into the evening about hopes and dreams. But over time the pressures of work, tiredness, and small unresolved hurts slowly settled in.
Nothing dramatic happened. No great argument. Just a gradual drifting. Conversations became shorter. Meals were eaten in silence. The warmth that once came so naturally felt harder to find. From the outside their life continued as normal, yet somewhere inside the relationship had grown dry.
Or when this dryness happens in a community or church . A group of people once gathered with excitement and imagination — perhaps to begin a project, a ministry, or a shared vision. At first there was energy and possibility. People volunteered eagerly. Ideas flowed.
But as the years passed the work became heavier. A few people carried more and more of the responsibility. Some quietly stepped away. Meetings became smaller. Enthusiasm grew thinner. The vision that once felt alive now feels tired.
Sometimes that dryness appears in our own inner life. We keep going to work, caring for others, fulfilling our responsibilities. From the outside everything appears steady. Yet inwardly we feel worn. Prayer feels harder. Hope feels fragile. We continue faithfully, but inside something feels thin, like soil that has not seen rain for a long time.
The prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones speaks directly into these kinds of places. Not only into dramatic disasters, but into the quiet landscapes of weariness that many of us recognise. Places where life once flowed but now feels brittle. Places where we might quietly wonder whether the energy or hope that once existed can ever return.
And it is into that very landscape that God asks the prophet a startling question:
“Mortal, can these bones live?”
It is a question that is as much for us as it was for Ezekiel. Because each of us, at some point in our lives, finds ourselves standing in some kind of valley of dry bones. The question is not whether dryness exists. The deeper question is whether God’s Spirit can breathe life even there.
This passage comes to us during the closing days of Lent – a time often called Passiontide. During these days we walk more closely with Jesus on the road toward Good Friday and Easter. The word passion – meaning to suffer or to undergo. It reminds us that the love revealed in Christ is not distant from human suffering. Instead, it is a love willing to enter fully into the brokenness of the world.
The journey of Passiontide slowly draws us toward a profound truth: that God’s power is revealed not through force or triumph, but through self-giving love. The cross shows us a God who does not stand apart from pain but chooses to be present within it.
The heart of the Christian faith is not triumphalism but compassion — a God who stays with us even in the deepest valleys of human experience.
And it is precisely into such a landscape that Ezekiel’s vision speaks.
The prophet is carried by the Spirit into a valley filled with bones. Not bodies that have recently fallen, but bones that are described as very dry. They have been lying there for a long time. Whatever life once existed has long since disappeared.
It is a stark and unsettling image — a picture of complete desolation.
For the people who first heard this vision, it reflected their own situation. Their city had been destroyed. Their temple lay in ruins. They were living far from home in exile. Their sense of identity had been shaken and their future felt uncertain.
Their despair is captured in the words that echo through the passage:
“Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost.”
They felt cut off — from their past, from their land, perhaps even from God.
Yet it is precisely in this place of loss that God begins to speak.
One of the striking details in the vision is that the prophet is not kept at a safe distance. The Spirit brings him directly into the valley. God invites him to stand among the bones and look closely at what appears beyond hope.
And then comes the question again:
“Mortal, can these bones live?”
The prophet does not rush to answer. He does not offer an easy reassurance. Instead he simply says, “Lord God, you know.”
It is a response of humility and trust — an acknowledgement that what seems impossible to human eyes may not be impossible to God.
Then something begins to happen.
The bones start to move.
They come together, bone to bone. What had once been scattered fragments slowly begin to take shape again. Sinews appear. Flesh grows. Skin covers them. Gradually, patiently, something is being rebuilt.
But the vision pauses to tell us something important.
The bodies are still not alive.
Structure has returned. The shape of life is present. Yet something essential is still missing. Everything may look complete on the outside, but the spark of life has not yet come.
Only when the breath enters them do the bodies truly live.
The word used here for breath also means wind or spirit. It is the life-giving breath of God — the same breath that, in the opening pages of Scripture, brings the first human being to life.
When that breath finally comes, the bodies stand up. The valley is no longer a field of scattered bones. It becomes a living community — “a vast multitude.”
The vision reminds us that renewal rarely happens all at once. Restoration unfolds slowly. First the bones gather. Then the body forms. Only then does the breath come. Life grows step by step.
There is also deep honesty in this story. Before anything new can begin, the reality of loss must be faced. The valley of bones is not hidden away or softened. It is looked at directly. The people’s despair is spoken aloud.
And yet even there, God is already at work.
This is why we read and reflect on this passage as we move closer to Good Friday and Easter. For the first followers of Jesus, the days surrounding the crucifixion must have felt like their own valley of dry bones. Their hopes collapsed. Their teacher died. Their community scattered in fear.
From the outside, it looked like the end of the story.
But the vision of Ezekiel reminds us that God often begins new life in places that appear finished. When everything seems scattered, the Spirit is gently gathering what has been broken. When hope feels exhausted, the breath of God is still moving.
And so the question spoken in that valley continues to echo across every generation:
Can these bones live?
The vision does not offer an easy answer. Instead it invites us to trust that even in the driest places, the breath of God has not stopped blowing.
Where we see only bones, God still sees the possibility of life.
The singer Leonard Cohen once wrote in his song Anthem:
“There is a crack in everything — that’s how the light gets in.”
Sometimes our lives feel cracked by disappointment, loss, or weariness. Yet those very cracks may become the places where light begins to enter. Perhaps the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel is like that — a place that looks broken, yet still open to the breath of God.
So perhaps the question we carry with us today is a simple one:
Where might we — individually, or as a community — be ready to ask for the breath of God to breathe life again into the dry bones and cracked places of our lives?
Image: Jeremy Malecki | Unsplash.com
