As I continue my stroll through the Old Testament, I’m now getting to books that I have barely read.  I’ve been very lazy about scriptural study for the past 23 years, and I’m fascinated by both the 10,000-foot view of the Bible as a whole, as well as examining each book in part.

I cracked open Ezekiel last weekend, and read chapter one with a mixture of fascination and confusion.  A thought occurred to me:

Don’t bother trying to understand God.  My first impulse, in picturing Ezekiel’s vision, was to try to interpret and explain it.  And, by doing that, I’m trying to stuff God into my own little box…to bring him under my control.  And God won’t be controlled by one of his creation.

I can picture Ezekiel, as he was either writing or dictating his vision, muttering to himself, “They’re never going to believe this…”  It reminds me of the time I tried explaining the rules of baseball to Ian.  The farther along I went, the more I realized it just didn’t make sense.  And yet, these were the rules…this is how it is.  I’m sure that there are aspects of Ezekiel’s vision that would make more sense to a Jew living in that time.  And yet, I’m also sure that most of it was entirely incomprehensible, like it would be for me.

And, I find a comfort in that.  I want a God with mysteries and unfathomable aspects.  Who wants to love and serve a God-in-a-box?

Recently, I’ve resumed my progress reading through the Old Testament.  It started off like a regulated march, but life intervened, and I found that I just wasn’t able to enter into reading it the way I could before.  I read the words, but they seemed dry.  (It didn’t help that I had bought an XBox 360; some distractions are self-inflicted.)

I’m back to strolling through the OT, and it feels good.  I noticed in the past couple of days that the desire to read scripture, and to try to get inside the heads of the writers to better understand their situations, has returned.  It feels wonderful.

I’m in the middle of Jeremiah right now.   One reason I stopped reading was that I didn’t feel ready to read about “the weeping prophet”; I’ve had enough of that already this year.

At any rate, more future posts will be about what I’m reading.  I’ll put in some personal stuff, as well; I just thought that this blog needs to be about more than “stinking firsts”.

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Jeremiah has been telling everyone that God was going to send the nations of Israel and Judah into exile into Babylon, contrary to what everyone else wanted to believe.  God’s patience with His peoples’ rebellion had ended, and now they were going to feel His wrath.  He had even even warned those who thought they would be better off if they stayed behind that it will be better for them if they accept God’s punishment.  In chapter 24, God gives Jeremiah a vision of two baskets of figs.  One basket had very good figs, ripe and ready to eat.  The other had poor figs, so bad that they could not be eaten.

The Lord then compared the good figs to the Jews who were exiled in Babylon.  He said:

Like these good figs, I regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Babylonians.  My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land.  I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them.  I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the LORD.  They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.
- Jeremiah 24:4-7

Conversely, this is what God had to say about the other basket of figs, who represent the leaders who had misled the people, as well as those who tried to escape God’s judgment by remaining in Jerusalem or escaping to Egypt:

“I will make them abhorrent and an offense to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a byword, an object of ridicule and cursing, wherever I banish them.  I will send the sword, famine and plague against them until they are destroyed from the land I gave to them and their fathers.”
- Jeremiah 24:9-10

I don’t think this has direct relevance on our situation right now.  I’m not going to say that what happened to Ian was a punishment from God; our situation was a result of living in a fallen world.  God, in His sovereignty, designated Deb and I to go through this for reasons that I’m not going to even bother trying to fathom.  I have some ideas, but to decide that I need to know why this happened leads only to madness and distance from God (not the best place to be).

What I do take away from the passages above is that I need to accept my Lord’s will in my life.  The more I try to get out of this situation, to reject God’s sovereignty in my life, the worse off I will be.  This is not a new lesson, just the same one presented in a different light.  From time to time, God will lead his followers into situations that are painful and make no sense.  There were exiles who had remained true to God, and yet were carried away into slavery in a foreign land.

If that was the end of the story…and way too often, that’s as far as we’re willing to go…then what?  Life isn’t fair; I’ll take my lumps and deal with it. Our horizons, in our pain and grief, tend to be very nearby.

Yet, God always has a purpose.  Later in Jeremiah, God give him the following word:

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and settle down; plan gardens and eat what they produce.  Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters.  Increase in number there; do no decrease.  Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.  Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.
- Jeremiah 29:4-7

God’s chastening is not without a redeeming purpose.  As I’ve explored before, when God shakes our rafters, our first response is to ask “Why me?” (I read this morning that the Hebrew translation for the title of the book we call Lamentations is actually “How…!”)

Instead, we need to always ask “to what end?”  God intended to bring his people back to a level of righteousness that had been missing in the nation.  But, He also wanted to do a work in Babylon, by placing repentant and humble people in their midst.  The rulers of Babylon were able to see God work in fantastic ways because His people were with them, seeking His purpose.

Sometimes, it feels like I’m in captivity.  I want to return home by living in the past (staying in Jerusalem), or making my own future of comfort (going to Egypt).  Instead, I pray that God will give me the courage and devotion to be a blessing in the present, where He has directed me to go.  I can take courage in that He will continue to give me a heart to know Him, and take comfort that He is watching over me for my good, not just my comfort.