Walking on Mended Legs

In February 1949, Ben Hogan's car collided head-on with a Greyhound bus on a foggy Texas highway. He threw himself across his wife Valerie to shield her, a decision that saved his life when the steering column crushed the driver's seat. His pelvis was fractured, his ankle shattered, blood clots nearly killed him in the hospital. Doctors doubted he would ever walk again, let alone swing a golf club.

Sixteen months later, Hogan stood on the final fairway at Merion Golf Club, his legs wrapped in bandages beneath his trousers, barely able to stand after walking thirty-six holes in a single day. He won the 1950 U.S. Open. He went on to claim five more major championships. Six of his nine career majors came after the accident that was supposed to end everything.

The prophet Ezekiel stood in a valley of dry bones and heard the Almighty ask, "Can these bones live?" God did not merely reassemble those bones. He breathed new life into them. Restoration in scripture is never just a return to what was. It is becoming something greater through the hands of the One who mends.

Whatever feels shattered in your life today, a marriage, a calling, a faith you once held close, the God who spoke life into a valley of death is not finished with you. He does not just patch what is broken. He restores beyond what came before.