Today's Reading:O.T. - Ezekiel 40 - 42
N.T. - Ephesians 3:4-21
Focus Verses: Ezekiel 40:1-5
1 In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth of the month, in the fourteenth year after the fall of the city—on that very day the hand of the LORD was upon me and he took me there. 2 In visions of God he took me to the land of Israel and set me on a very high mountain, on whose south side were some buildings that looked like a city. 3 He took me there, and I saw a man whose appearance was like bronze; he was standing in the gateway with a linen cord and a measuring rod in his hand. 4 The man said to me, "Son of man, look with your eyes and hear with your ears and pay attention to everything I am going to show you, for that is why you have been brought here. Tell the house of Israel everything you see." 5 I saw a wall completely surrounding the temple area. The length of the measuring rod in the man's hand was six long cubits, each of which was a cubit and a handbreadth. He measured the wall; it was one measuring rod thick and one rod high.
Insight:
Ezekiel's vision of a restored temple is very strange and mysterious to me. It's a temple plan that was not built when the Israelites returned from their exile. And from a Christian point of view, it's a temple plan that doesn't seem necessary to build or likely to be built at any time in the future. So what is here for me to apply? Well, for starters I could simply embrace the mystery of Scripture. The words of the prophets, like most true things, are gloriously complex and difficult to fully understand. Ezekiel's vision was for someone else in another time and place. Maybe they didn't even understand it. Or maybe they did not accept it and so never took hold of the promised possibility.
Though I do not understand Ezekiel's vision, I do understand that Ezekiel was a man in exile living among the exiled captives who had experienced the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. Twenty-five years into captivity and forty-five years before it would end, Ezekiel had such faith in God's promise to literally save and restore his people, that he had dreams about the floor plans and measurements of a new temple built in a new Jerusalem. That's real faith and hope.
Response and Action:
The story of God's redemptive relationship with his people is long and complex. I will not let the things I don't understand stop me from pursuing my own story and my own relationship with God. Even my story is too difficult for me to fully comprehend! I will also open my heart and mind to to what Ezekiel calls "visions of God." I want to have a godly imagination and be open to possibilities of restoration, new life, and new hope, and to dream about them in full color and great detail.
O God, open my eyes to the possibilities you have given me in Christ. Show me your ways and give me faith and hope to pursue every good dream and every worthy goal that finds its inspiration in you. Amen.
Proverbs: 4:25
"Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you."
Resources:
An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination
by Walter Brueggemann
