I personally found this portion of Ezra (latter half of Chapter 8), to be slightly comical. Ezra has proudly told the King that God will protect them on their four-month journey back to Jerusalem, so then he felt ashamed (as in, he felt it would dent his pride!) to ask the King for a guard or security of some sort.
So, Ezra got the people of Israel to fast and pray to God asking him to protect them and keep them safe during their journey. Which God does.
My thoughts only are : Did God use Ezra's shame (and/or pride) to get all the returning exiles to focus on Him and pray to Him? How 'okay' is it to let such pride/shame rule our lives? And, something I've done multiple times in my own life, is it okay to challenge the world at large because we have such an awesome and fantastic God?
I don't have the answers to the above questions. I only think that we should be so comfy and cosy and understanding of God, that we completely bank on Him and say, "So what if the world won't help or show up? My God and me, we can do anything!"
No comments:
Post a Comment