I’m on holiday so have a chance to catch up with posting about my reading the whole bible in a year challenge…. No it definitely won’t be finished in one year. Two perhaps! I’ve read Lamentations and have got most of the way through Ezekiel.
The bit of lamentations that stuck out for me were the words “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?” They were part of a Palm Sunday service of Stainers Crucifixion (or something similar) back in the mid-1980s sung by our parish choir. Here’s a link to someone singing it.
That was the time the ‘penny dropped’ and I realised that it WAS something to me and that Jesus had died for me. I believed he died for everyone, mankind in general. But that was the day that my heart was stirred and it hit me personally.
Ezekiel’s visions are not easy to capture in art quickly. Wheels within wheels, wings, fire, the glory of God.
I was struck by how many times God referred to his people’s unfaithfulness. Chapter 23 was particularly powerful. The over-riding message is one of God’s wanting his people to be faithful and to be in good relationship with him, not chasing after other gods or continuing with the practices of the nations around them. He longs for them to act justly, to turn back from evil ways to him. But they refuse. So Babylon it is – exile.
When the surrounding nations gloat over Israel’s fate, they too come under God’s judgement.
Elizabeth Jones' Diary 