Ghost StoriesSample

Have you ever heard the story or seen the movie Frankenstein? In the story, Dr. Frankenstein creates this monster from different body parts, stitches them together, and attempts to give life to this creature he created. When you think about it, the story of Frankenstein is pretty weird and creepy. Something that was not alive was brought to life. Similar but not the same, to an event that happened in Ezekiel 37.

Ezekiel was a prophet that God was using while being held captive in Babylon, along with other Jews, by king Nebuchadnezzar. In this specific chapter, Ezekiel was seeing what was like a vision that was given by the Spirit of God and in this vision Ezekiel was in the valley of dry bones. The bones in this valley were human and traditionally, if a corpse had not been buried that meant the person was disgraced because burying the dead in the Jewish culture was a big deal. This means that Ezekiel was in a valley that was filled with bones from disgraced people. The Lord commands Ezekiel to speak to these bones and tell them to come alive. Step by step, the Lord commands Ezekiel to tell the bones to live, to tell them to breathe, and so on. These bones, before Ezekiel's eyes are covered with tendons and flesh, are given breath and made alive. Then stands an army of people before Ezekiel.

This sounds pretty scary, right? If you were to dream about only this much of the story, you would probably consider it a nightmare. However, God was using this vision to speak to Ezekiel to bring hope and encouragement to Ezekiel and Israel. At the end of the vision, God tells Ezekiel that these dry bones were Israel and that He has a plan to bring hope and life to the nation. The people of Israel were being held captive and God was promising to bring them back to their homeland. I bet you’ve never seen a scary movie with a happy ending.

This is exactly what the Lord does. When we feel defeated and hopeless, He brings victory and hope. He promises to never leave or forsake us. This week we will be studying different hope stories from the Bible, stories of when God’s people were discouraged and lost yet God steps into their scary situation and reminds them who He is.