“So God speaks again:“Prophesy to the breath… Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live” (Ezekiel 37:9–10).

I flipped through the pages of the Farmer’s Almanac the other day, and guess what?

The forecast is SPRING!

Which felt both encouraging and slightly unnecessary, because apparently spring is very committed to showing up—about 43ish days from now—whether I’m watching for it or not.

Still, it made me smile.

Not because I didn’t know spring was coming. I know the calendar. I’ve lived through enough winters to trust that it shows up. Eventually. To know God’s time and attention always circle back around, flipping our world in the necessary ways, turning our axis so we can once again warm our faces to the sun.

Anyway, knowing something is true doesn’t always mean I’m living like it’s true.

Maybe “thinking spring” should be enough. And yet…is it?

Oxygen for the Tired Soul 

Granted, some hopes seem too far past the horizon. Some prayers? Too long unanswered. And so, like ground that’s been frozen too hard to take seed, out of sheer exhaustion I admit, some dreams—if I’m being honest—well, I’ve already mentally buried them.

This winter, I’ve learned this life lesson the hard way…through my Fiddly Fig plant (and what a grand name!). When zero degrees hit our sunroom, I truly thought it was finished. Days later, though, teeny green shoots appeared. I had to look hard to see it. But they are there!

Spring is like that, too, I’m finding out. It doesn’t resent winter. It simply outlasts it, showing up with rain and warmth and patience and hope until the soil finally remembers what it was created to do.

Breathe.

Sometimes that’s the whole prayer. Inhale, exhale, ahhh.

It is the same breath that hovered over creation in the beginning, before light fractured the dark and Adam’s lungs were filled. The same breath that still moves through cold soil and forgotten places, I believe it. Jesus, I believe.

Life has always come this way, I’m still learning. Not forced. Not manufactured. And not DIY’d, for sure. Believe me. I’ve tried. But rather, all this oxygen is graciously given by the Father.

And Scripture has been telling this story long before I ever noticed it.

Certainly we see this in Ezekiel 37:1–14, when he was prophesying during Israel’s exile in Babylon. God’s people had lost their land, their freedom, and their hope (verse 11).So God gives Ezekiel a vision.

And He brings him into a valley full of bones. Not away from the mess. Not around despair.

Right into it.

There is no remaining natural possibility of life there, Scripture tells us the truth in this. No spring. No evidence. Not even green shoots lay underneath sharp shards. Clink, clink. The situation looks completely beyond human repair. Then God asks Ezekiel a question:

“Son of man, can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3)

He answers, “O Lord GOD, you know.”

He doesn’t deny the hopelessness. Instead, He understands redemption is alive without effort, resurrection given without trying just so hard to live. Then God tells him to do something that makes very little sense. “Prophesy over these bones… O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD” (Ezekiel 37:4–6). Ezekiel is told to speak God’s word before any sign of life bursts through the cracks. Even before the light is let in.

And Ezekiel obeys.

Faith First

Because faith comes first, and evidence comes later. Sometimes much later. What happens next though is SPRING, y’all.

And oh, this hope gets me, as God begins to put the broken pieces back together again, even though, “there was no breath in them” (Ezekiel 37:8). So God speaks again: “Prophesy to the breath… Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live” (Ezekiel 37:9–10).

That word, ruach, means breath, wind, Spirit. Life has always come this way: God breathed. This entire passage feels to me like the long exhale of winter before the first bold pop of spring. A Central Nervous Reset, perhaps, something each of us might desperately need. Like green shoots after frost. Or leaves returning to a plant I had already given up on. Hope quietly finding its way back in. Mostly, though, I hear it. Don’t you? The sound of freedom walking slowly through the steel bars of healing. 

Because God then declares, “These bones are the whole house of Israel” (verse 11). They believed they were finished. But God said they were not.

So why did God call on Ezekiel’s voice to announce life when He could have spoke it Himself? Why does He call on my voice today to yell out that, “Spring is on its way!” Especially, when I’ve been sitting in a soul-winter for so long? I’m not sure. I would love your thoughts here? Because one other brain just might be better than this one, just sayin.  

Maybe, maybe it was to show us His glory through fallible noise. Or remind us that resurrected life does not come from human effort or hot air. Not from try-hard souls. Not from holding it together. I’m still working on this, you see.

As a Fix-Her-Upper, I’m learning that life comes through breaking and remaking. Through dirt being pushed aside. Through old things loosening their grip so new things can rise. And always, the Spirit bursts in to make room to breathe and bloom. 

Even today, friends, I’ve watched God bring things back to life that had no gasp left in them. I’ve seen Him redeem what looked lost. And I pray He continues the healing. Yes and Amen. He breathes.

God keeps reminding me that dry bones do not raise themselves no matter how intensely they rattle and shake. And maybe that’s why I smiled at the Farmer’s Almanac. Flipping through my Bible now, I see it again. According to every forecast, heavenly and earthly, spring is still on its way. Sometimes it feels like “not soon enough.” (Prayer and praise hands here.)

But whether we’re watching for it or not.

It is right on time.