A Dry Spell · Ezekiel 37 · #2100 : "The Waters Are About to Be Released"

This morning, before the sun had fully settled into the sky, I felt that familiar heaviness — the kind that sits in your chest when you’ve been laboring long in a place that still looks barren. It reminded me of summers growing up, when the heat pressed down like a weight and the ground turned to something almost unbreakable.

If you’ve ever tried to dig in soil that’s been scorched by drought, you know the feeling. Every strike of the shovel feels like it ricochets back into your bones. You put in so much effort for so little movement. You sweat, you strain, you breathe hard, and the earth barely shifts.

That’s what my spirit felt like — tired from digging, tired from hoping, tired from believing for breakthrough in places that still looked dry.

And in that moment of weariness, a scripture from Ruth 1:16 rose up in me like a whisper from somewhere deep:

“Bid me not to leave you.”

The cry of Ruth’s heart — the refusal to walk away, even when the road ahead is hard and uncertain.

It was as if the Lord was saying, “I’m not leaving you. Don’t leave the place where I’m working, even if it looks lifeless right now.”

Later, during our morning walk, I stood with my granddaughter at the fire station. We watched the firefighters release water from a hydrant, and the force of it startled both of us. It wasn’t a trickle. It wasn’t a slow pour. It was a sudden, roaring release. A flood.

And right there, the Lord brought the pieces together.

Because in the middle of that moment — with scripture, music, images, and song all converging — He spoke a word to me, clear and distilled:

“RIVER, Your tears are not unseen. Your prayers are not ignored. Your work is not invisible. The hydrant is open. The water is flowing. The cycle is complete, and you are entering an altered state. You will SEE differently with what I am bringing about. So speak to the bones. I will breathe.”

I sat with that for a long time.

The valley of dry bones isn’t a metaphor we visit when we’re feeling poetic. It’s a real place we walk through — the place where things look dead, where promises look delayed, where the ground feels too hard to break.

But the Lord doesn’t ask us to resurrect anything by our own strength. He asks us to speak. And He promises to breathe.

Just like that hydrant — the pressure building unseen, until suddenly the release comes. Just like that parched ground — hard for a season, until the water softens what our own strength never could. Just like Ruth — choosing to stay when everything in us wants to quit.

Today, I felt Him say:

“Don’t walk away from the valley. Don’t stop digging. Don’t stop speaking. The water is already moving beneath the surface. The breath is already coming.”

And so I’m choosing to stand in the middle of whatever looks dry, whatever looks delayed, whatever looks impossible — and speak life again.

Because He said, “I will breathe.”

🎵 Song that accompanied this reflection:   https://youtu.be/gxHJxpIzLec?si=BXJnhQAH3y4FmlHO

🌿 The Refuge of Peace Justice & Advocacy Center:   https://www.therefugeofpeace.org/

“We will keep digging here at The Refuge of Peace for the Glory of GOD and the Good of His People.”  

— RIVER