Stress Test Devotional May 11
May 11, 2024
EZEKIEL 37:8-10 | 8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." 10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones becomes a Resurrection picture. His prophetic words spark a Lazarus-like scene on a vast scale, a multitude of people are recreated and reanimated as the “ruach,” meaning Spirit or breath, returns to them.
Those images take a new meaning after the Resurrection of Jesus. In His day the Israelites believed in a general Resurrection, when the bones would again live, at the end of history prior to the Final Judgement. With Jesus we see one man raised, within history, to an indestructible form of life. Not just recalled to regular life, bios, but renewed in a new form of life, zoe, that never ends.
How do you picture Resurrection?
How does Jesus’ Resurrection differ from Lazarus’ return?
