Walking In Hope When Life Seems Dry And Brittle

Black soot covered the earth as a reminder of a once violent explosion. As I walked the valley of lava, I wondered how many lives were altered as a result. Off in the distance, the Maui mountain line with its lush greenery and cotton candy clouds painted a beautiful scenery. But the ground beneath my feet crunched under the pressure of every step.

It’s been years since our Maui honeymoon, and yet I’m reminded of another dry gorge. A valley in my own life, where life crackled under intense pressure. For three years, I have walked back and forth in this valley listening to the barrage of explosions, every attempt an effort to chew away at the ground of hope securing my feet.

Perhaps you find yourself in a similar valley. When you survey the land, you see the beauty on the horizon of others’, but the soil under your feet reminds you of the violent lava erupting within. Weariness creeps in, fear entangles, and hope is squeezed out.

That’s where I was at several months back as I read through Ezekiel 37. A story I’ve read many times, yet this time it had a familiar connection to my own life. Somewhere in between verse 1 and 2, it hit me, those valleys of dry bones – where life seems impossible – are sometimes God ordained. God not only placed Ezekiel in the middle of the valley BUT He led him back and forth among the bones to survey the vastness of impossibilities.

“The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ² He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. Ezekiel 37:1-2

Now, by no means am I saying every trek through a valley is God’s design because that’s simply not the case. We live in a fallen world where brokenness happens. But even those valleys, as painful as they are, must bow their knee to the King.

You see, it’s in the valley where battles are fought, and giants are slain (1 Samuel 17). It’s here in the low places we see there are more in the hills fighting for us than those fighting against us (2 Kings 6:17). The valley is where we get to watch our Mountainous God turn the dry ground into springs of living water (Isaiah 35:6-7). Here in the wilderness, we experience His divine presence and protection, learning to trust our God who sees the end from the beginning.

But it’s also in this parched land where we can get stuck. It’s here while we “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” that we pitch a tent and stop moving forward. On this dirt filled, cracked desert ground is where we become weak in the knees, weary to our bones, and our hope tends to fail.

If that’s you or someone you know, join me for a new series here on the blog called, “Infuse: Walking In Hope Despite Circumstances.”

Because many of the battles the Israelites fought to embrace their promised land were in the valleys.  And the same is true with us. Many of our “promised lands” are on the other side of this battle – the barren valley with dry bones. Let’s pack up that tent and start moving forward.