If you’re anything like me, you welcome winter as it comes in. The early nights blanket us in Christmas lights, hot chocolate, and cozy movie nights in the living room. The routine of Advent and family devotionals helps us end each night together. But once the holidays pass and we only have sickness and long winter days to look forward to, the charm of the season fades. For some, winter days bring uncertainty, loneliness, or personal darkness.
As winter drags on, I look out our picture window and see the chill of winter present in the empty sidewalks, the frost-tipped yard, and the sun’s truant afternoons.
But in spring, out the same window, children scooter down our sidewalk, flanked by moms and dads carrying snacks and renounced coats. Leaves once again obscure the neighbor’s house and birds visit the feeder out front. Small friends gather in each other’s yards, playing soccer and jumping on trampolines, roaming the neighborhood to stake out lemonade stands. The cold death of winter is over—spring has arrived.
In spring, life makes itself known.
The Lessons of Spring
Spring illustrates a great truth of the Christian life. Just as the death of winter makes way for the resurrection of life in spring, when God saves us, he takes those spiritually dead and makes them alive.
Too often, we have too small a view of God’s great work of salvation. We might think of Christianity as something we add on to our lives. We attend church, pray, and read our Bibles and think we have this salvation thing down. Or perhaps it feels like behavioral change. Our behavior before Christ was bad, but now it’s not. He’s made us better people. Or maybe we think of salvation as the beginning of a relationship with God—we didn’t know him and now we do. While these things aren’t wrong, they don’t get to the heart of salvation.
Before Christ, we were dead because of our sin—no heartbeat detected (Eph. 2:5). Those who are dead can’t go to church, change their behavior, or start relationships to make themselves alive.
Really, Really Dead
All of Scripture preaches this truth, that we’re dead and need God to bring us to life. In Ezekiel 37—one of the strangest passages in Scripture—God leads the prophet Ezekiel through a valley filled with dried, rotten bones. Each step forward brings the stench of death, the crack of bone, the taste of stale air. These bones represented the hearts of the Israelites (Ezek. 37:12–14). Spiritually, they were dead. They were tombs.
They needed resurrection.
God gives Ezekiel these words to prophesy over the bones: “I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD” (Ezek. 37:6). As soon as Ezekiel speaks the words God gave him, the sound of bones rattling crashes through the once-silent valley. Just as God promised, his hands piece together each bone until a lifeless army stands before Ezekiel.
But God isn’t done yet. He breathes on the army and the army lives. The bones that once covered the valley’s floor stand before Ezekiel as people, alive. Life floods the once-barren valley—spring replaces the death of winter. Life makes itself known.
The Good Life
The prophecy of dead bones coming to life wasn’t just for Ezekiel’s Israelites—it’s for us, too. The valley of dried bones is our personal testimony, our story of salvation.
When Scripture speaks of being born again (John 3:3), participating in Christ’s resurrection (Rom. 6:5), and being made alive (Eph. 2:5), it’s not just illustrating a teaching point—it’s describing a reality. Here is what Ephesians declares to be true about us when we trust Christ: Once we were dead, “but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us … made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4–6). The valley of dried bones points to the need for resurrection; the life-filled army points to our resurrection.
And the breath of God that entered Ezekiel’s army? Even then, God signaled the eventual giving of his Holy Spirit—to us (Titus 3:5–6). As one pastor reminded us, “Every growth of spiritual life, from the first tender shoot until now, [has been] the work of the Holy Spirit.”
Resurrection Testimonies
The first day of spring—that first glance out the window that shows us the death of winter has made way for a new season—recalls the miracle of new life. Just as the beauty of spring sings the glory of God after a season of death, so do our Christian lives.
Your salvation is no small feat. Your testimony is no dull story. You were once dead and God made you alive.
Through Christ, our spiritual deaths have been defeated.
Praise God for new life.
