Ezekiel 5
Okay, this is the second chapter in a row where God has asked Ezekiel to do something that, as a priest, he “shouldn’t” do: “Now, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber’s razor to shave your head and your beard. Then take a set of scales and divide up the hair. When the days of your siege come to an end, burn a third of the hair inside the city. Take a third and strike it with the sword all around the city. And scatter a third to the wind.” (vs 1-2)
Ezekiel 4
What a strange chapter! One thing’s for sure: God certainly asked His prophets to do weird things at times. And I don’t know about you, but if I had answered the call to be a prophet, and the first assignment God gave me was to lay on my side(s) for 14 months, I might have to lodge a complaint!
Ezekiel 2
At a time when God was “giving up” His people into captivity, He wasn’t actually “giving up” on them at all. That’s one of the things I’ve discovered on this trip through the Bible: at a time when Israel seemed to be at its lowest possible point, God was communicating with them more thaan ever. Far from abandoning them, He was pursuing them all the more.
Ezekiel 1
Sometimes you just have to stand in awe of God. We need look no further than this chapter to realize that God is pretty much indescribable. I mean, Ezekiel tried really hard, but didn’t you chuckle your way through most of this chapter? I tried to imagine four-faced, four-winged creatures who speed around on burning wheels of fire, but the images in my head were most ridiculous.
Lamentations 5
Ever since my first child was in her first year of life, I tried to live by a parenting principle I picked up from one of the books I read. It advised: Begin as you mean to go. In other words, that book suggests that parents begin training their children with the long view in mind. This way, training is purposeful and not erratic. For example, when I wanted Caroline to learn to feed herself in a certain way, I didn’t allow her to throw food onto the floor for three months before having to “re-train” her to keep her food on her plate. I started by never allowing her to throw food on the floor. I began as I meant to go. And I still do.
Lamentations 4
The King of the Jews died a long time before He was hung on a cross at Calvary.
Yes, long before that Good Friday, God succumbed to the longstanding idolatry of His chosen people, and when Jerusalem (along with the Temple) was razed, He died in the minds of all the heathen He had been working so hard to reach. And even if His “death” at that time was just as temporary as the death Christ died on the cross, the total devastation of Israel nonetheless meant that God would have to start all over again in His bid to reveal Himself to humanity.
Lamentations 3
I hear the questions often: if God is so good, why are things in this world so bad? How can a loving God tolerate evil? How can He just let us suffer? Actually, there is much in Scripture to suggest that the assumption behind these questions is misguided. God isn’t sitting back with His arms folded in some distant locale, letting evil run rampant.
Lamentations 2
Of all the things you want to say about God, that “He is like an enemy” is not one of them! But neither do I wish to ignore or “gloss over” issues in the Old Testament that may be troubling to some Christians. And when you’re writing a blog about what the Bible has to say about who God is, it seems only fair to tackle the descriptions that seem “bad” right along with the “good” ones.
