Ezekiel 37:1-14 The hand of the LORD was on me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD… Then comes the Divine challenge to the man who is willing honestly, and without any disguise, to contemplate the facts: "And He said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live?" God will have the sympathy and the hope and the eager anticipation of His servant for His enterprise before He will openly pledge Himself to it. Ponder the situation — God and His servant all alone, and together gazing at that valley very full of very dry bones! Thus do begin the things which thrill earth and heaven! No life, no promise, no hope, anywhere but in Him who searches us with His challenge. There can be no mighty commerce between earth and heaven except through the faith which believeth Him "who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were." It is a chief peril of our creaturehood to make ourselves — not the living God — the law and measure and explanation of all things. "We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight" — wailed the unbelieving spies! And what could grasshoppers achieve against giants? Yet the Word of Jehovah had pledged victory. Two dominions are ever open to us — self or God, our creature thoughts or our Creator's Word. In that momentous testing hour it was not in self and its thinkings that Ezekiel took his stand, but in God and His greatness: "O Lord God, Thou!" Let us follow his example, and so become "men of God" the highest dignity open to us — men who ever account the living God the first and chief factor in every problem of thought and conduct. The miserable alternative is the grasshopper manner — grasshopper fears, grasshopper thinkings, grasshopper doings! And of what avail is a grasshopper in a valley of dry bones? (C. G. Macgregor.) Parallel Verses KJV: The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, |
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