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All around me, the world is asleep.

The trees that rustle and whisper during most of the year are now silent, stripped of their leaves.  Most of the birds have migrated, taking with them the melodic soundtrack of summer days.  Even the deer are subdued, ensconced in the protective arms of forest thickets.  

The depths of winter are a holy hush.  After the riotous color and action and life of all other seasons, winter is soaked in a silence so pervasive that when I roam the silvery hillsides or watch the sluggish trickle of the ice-encrusted streams, I imagine that I can almost, almost, hear the gentle breathing of the dreaming earth.   

But for many animals, this sleeping isn’t merely figurative; it’s literal.  Right now, in holes and dens and burrows, many animals are slumbering in a very important yet enigmatic form of sleep—hibernation.  

You see, winter is a perilous time for wildlife.  The cold temperatures are dangerous for small animals, and snow and ice render their usual patterns of travel more difficult.  Perhaps most seriously, winter brings a reduced supply of food.  The nuts, seeds, and berries that were so plentiful in the growing season are now depleted.  

Thus, hibernation serves as an escape for many species of animals, from woodchucks and chipmunks to hedgehogs and mice.  Beginning in early fall, they frantically gorge themselves on all the food they can find in order to build up a thick layer of subcutaneous fat.  When winter begins to nip the earth, hormonal changes signal the animals to retreat to their burrows and sleep the winter away.  While they may wake fitfully from time to time, this sleep is mostly undisturbed for the duration of the winter, and the fat layer provides energy for their survival as well as insulation from the cold.  By spring, the fat store is depleted, and the animals rise with the awakening world—hungry, emaciated, but no doubt relieved to have survived another long winter.     

The concept of hibernation is referenced in stories, artwork, and the collective mythology we weave about the natural world.  The cultural interpretation of hibernation evokes images of gophers and ground squirrels spiraled in nests of grass, reliving dreams of summer—warm, safe, and blissful.  (A hibernation-themed article by the website Environmental Ecology for Kids reflects this myth with its title:  “Snug in the Snow.”)  

However, in reality, the picture is a bit bleaker.  Hibernation is more than ordinary sleep; it’s a state of dormancy accompanied by a dramatically lowered metabolism.  In other words, the animal’s body shuts down to the point that they are, for all practical purposes, lifeless.  In fact, if you stumbled across a hibernating animal in the middle of winter, you wouldn’t be able to find any sign of life.  The animal would be cold to the touch, perhaps even ice-covered.  It would be stiff, its muscles rigid, its limbs locked into position.  Its breathing and heart rate would be so slow as to be nearly undetectable.  For an example of how dramatic these changes are, just consider the woodchuck.  Its body temperature while hibernating is a frosty 38 degrees, and its heart rate, normally a rapid 80 beats a minute, slows to an incredible 4 or 5 beats a minute!  Yes, if you found a hibernating animal, you’d feel a pang of pity and sadly label it another casualty of winter. 

But despite all appearances, despite the frost on their fur and the rigidity in their limbs and the almost-nonexistent heart rate, these animals are very much alive.  They’re not even injured or ill.  When spring smiles on the earth, they’ll defy all logic—opening their tight-shut eyes and shaking the ice from their coats and scurrying up from their underground dens.  The animals that frolic in springtime meadows are ones that could have easily been mistaken for dead only a few weeks earlier.   

When I consider this, I wonder how many times in our lives we make the same mistake.  Okay, so we probably don’t have a lot of experience with judging the vitality of hibernating animals.  But haven’t we all looked at people, or places, or situations and only seen death—when in reality, hope was still very much alive?  

I’m reminded of the story of Ezekiel 37.  This prophecy is perhaps one of the most bizarre in all of Scripture.  In this vision, the prophet Ezekiel was taken by God to a valley filled with a macabre scene:  a tangled mass of scattered human bones.  Ezekiel recounts the exchange that followed:  “He [God] led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.  He asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’  I said, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know’” (v. 2-3 ESV).

Ezekiel’s reply resonates with me.  He doesn’t make an extravagant profession of faith, but neither does he negate the chance of a miracle.  Instead, he places the possibilities right where they belong—in the hands of a God he rightfully calls “sovereign.”  With his simple statement, he acknowledges that to his eyes, resuscitation is far out of reach—but he also affirms his trust in the power of God.  And how does God respond?  By doing the impossible:  taking the lifeless jumble of bones and resurrecting them into a mighty army. 

My friends, we’ve all stood in a valley of dry bones and gazed at situations that seemed to be totally, completely, unquestioningly, dead.  Perhaps it’s a wayward child that won’t return, a family member that can’t be pleased, a health condition that can’t be managed, a marriage that’s been shattered, or a career that can’t be salvaged.  These circumstances can seem just as helpless as the dry bones—as hopeless as the hibernating animals.  Regardless of the specifics, when we gaze at dreams that seem so totally dead, our natural human instinct is to give up—to fling our last shreds of hope to the whipping wind.  Our souls are fragile, shockingly so, and somehow, this tendency can masquerade as protection—choosing to surrender our hope rather than have it yanked mercilessly from our hands.  But whether we’re motivated by fear, or grief, or frustration, the danger of this human weakness is great:  we often declare the situation dead long before God is finished working.  

Renowned author Andy Andrews once wrote, “There are no hopeless situations…only people who have grown hopeless about them.  You still have choices you can make.”  My friends, nothing is ever too far gone for God!  He brought a nation out of a 400-year bondage; restored life to a man who’d been lying in a tomb for three days; and (best of all) put His Spirit in our sinful hearts.  If there is just one thing I can say with certainty about God, it’s this:  He is in the business of resurrection.  He has always delighted in bringing new life out of seeming death and breathing hope into the bleakest circumstances.  When the situation looks frozen in death, His power is revealed in its most dazzling glory.  

And in the kind of paradox only God could invent, sometimes, apparent death is the exact opposite:  the path to life.  

Just think about the hibernating animals again.  In the midst of hibernation, they’re hovering in the twilight areas on the fringes of life, camping on the very doorstep of death.  And yet, in the beautiful irony of God’s creation, it is this journey through the valley of death that is responsible for their life.  

You see, it would be impossible for these creatures to survive the winter if their metabolism were operating at the normal rate.  There simply wouldn’t be enough food available to sustain them.  They would suffer an agonizing death through starvation, and they would never see the spring.  But in His mercy and wisdom, the Creator endowed them with the ability to conserve precious resources by entering this dormant state.  By “dying,” they’re actually living.  

It sounds outlandish, and it defies our logic, but it is the way of the Kingdom that quite often, apparent “death” is a necessary ingredient to an outpouring of blessing and life greater than what we can imagine.  Just think of these examples.  As Christians, we must first die to ourselves to receive new life in Christ; we “die” in baptism to symbolically take part in Christ’s atonement; and we die to our sinful desires daily to appropriate the life Jesus won for us.  Of course, the most dramatic example in all of history is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—by His death, He opened a path to eternal life for all who would believe on Him.  

This is a repeating pattern, my friends.  Oftentimes, what we classify as dead is not only very much alive, but preparing for a rebirth we would never expect or imagine.   

However, I know that if you’re staring at the frozen figures of your dreams—if you can no longer distinguish between dormancy and death—if the white silence of winter seems to have shrouded your soul—then no words I could say would salve your heart.  You may be thinking that I don’t know how bad things are, or how long you’ve waited, or how unanswered your prayers have been, or how utterly bleak your situation is.  And you’re right…I don’t have a window to your particular pain.  But I’ve carried my own.  I’ve stood in the valley of dry bones.  I’ve searched in vain for any trace of life in circumstances that seemed graveyard-ready.  And I know this:  even when it looks as if things are dead, even when there’s no symptom of life, even when we have every reason to turn and walk away with granite grief in our hearts—there is still abundant hope to be found.  God can reverse any situation.  And sometimes, surprisingly often, what mimics death from our point of view is actually the launchpad for new life.  

Did you enjoy this post? What circumstances in your life have been restored by God? Let me know in the comments! Also, to read more about hibernation, check out this link, from which the facts referenced in this post were drawn.