Ezekiel 37:3 — “Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.”
When I first surrendered to the mission field, I was certain God was sending me to minister to gringo surfers on the beaches of Costa Rica. Instead, I have spent thirty-three years in a garbage dump — in the second-poorest country in the western hemisphere. If you had shown me that valley at the beginning, I might have called it hopeless. I would have been wrong. Because I’ve learned that the places that look the most like death are exactly where God loves to show up.
There’s a vision in Scripture that has become the story of my life. God carries the prophet Ezekiel out into a valley — and it is full of bones. Not a few. Very many. And the text is careful to tell us they were very dry (Ezekiel 37:1–2). Dry means it had been over a long time. No flesh. No breath. No natural hope of anything ever living again. When I look at families who have lived in the Managua dump for four generations — children born into the garbage, hunger passed down like an inheritance — I know exactly what that valley looks like.
Then God asks Ezekiel the one question He keeps asking me: “Son of man, can these bones live?” Thirty-three years and four generations in, He still whispers it — Deannie, are you really making a difference? The honest, human answer is no. But Ezekiel gives the wiser one: “O Lord God, You know.” He simply hands the impossible back to the only One for whom nothing is impossible.
Then God gives a strange command: speak to the bones. Tell them to hear the word of the Lord. (Prophesying isn’t anything spooky — it simply means telling someone what God has said. When you tell a child, “God loves you so much He sent His only Son for you,” that is prophesying.) So Ezekiel obeys, and the moment he speaks, there is a rattling — bone joining to bone, sinew and flesh rising over the dead. That is exactly what happened to me. I was dead, and when enough people spoke God’s Word over me, He put me back together, piece by piece.
Ezekiel 37:4–5 — “Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord… Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live.”
But the story doesn’t end with the bones standing up. Even joined and covered with flesh, Scripture says there was still no breath in them. Structure isn’t life. So God tells Ezekiel to call on the wind — the very breath of the Holy Spirit — and as he obeys, breath fills them, and they stand: an exceeding great army. That is the difference between a program and a resurrection. We can put food in a child’s hands and a roof over their head — but only the Spirit of God breathes eternal life into them. So we do both: we meet the need, and we pray for the wind.
He starts where it looks hopeless. A valley of dry bones. A garbage dump. A dead marriage, a diagnosis, a crisis of faith. The deadness isn’t the end of the story — it’s the setting where God does His best work.
He works through spoken truth. God’s Word carries the power to realign, restore, and rebuild what was lost.
He breathes life no program can. Meals and shelter give structure; only the Holy Spirit gives life. We meet the need and pray for the wind — because we’re after resurrection, not relief.
This is why I can stand in that dump after thirty-three years and still call it a message of profound hope. I have watched God do in these children exactly what He did in that valley — and exactly what He did in me. No situation is too far gone. He specializes in resurrection.
Maybe you’re reading this from a valley of your own — a dead marriage, a financial crisis, a chronic illness, a faith that feels like it’s flatlined. Hear me, friend: no matter how long it has been dead, God is saying over it today, “You shall live.” Stop staring at the dryness and start speaking His Word over it — over your family, your finances, your children, your own weary heart. Life and death are in the power of the tongue.
The children we serve carry burdens no child should ever carry — poverty, abandonment, and sometimes harm under their own roof. To the world they are a hopeless statistic. To God they are a valley about to become an army. We don’t just tell them about Jesus; we stay, and we watch Him breathe.
He specializes in resurrection.