You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and strange language, but to the people of Israel—Ezekiel 3:5

 

Today's Scripture Reading (July 27, 2026): Ezekiel 3

A while back, I read an article by Brian McLaren about our responsibility to creation. McLaren starts off the article by describing where he was. 

RIGHT NOW, I'M thigh-deep in muck. Clad in hip waders, I'm slogging through a spring-fed bog in northern Maryland. I'm surrounded by tussock sedge, alder, jewelweed, skunk cabbage, and swamp rose. And I'm having a great time (Brian McLaren)

At that time, McLaren had been part of a volunteer team for a couple of days each year that studied and tried to protect the North American Bog Turtle, the rarest turtle in our part of the world. But as he tells his story of his search for the turtle, he also begins to describe his own disappointment in a Christian Church that does not seem to care about protecting the ecology of our world. In fact, he openly points to Christians as part of the problem. Unfortunately, he is right. We have become enamored with an escapist theology that preaches that this world will one day be thrown into the trash pile, and we will simply escape to somewhere else. Yet, in Genesis 1, God looked at creation and called it good, and in the end, he called it very good. Why would he want to throw all of it away when time has been completed?

Baby Bog Turtle

And it is not just our ecology that is taking the brunt of our negligence. Evangelically, we have carried the same carelessness into our practices, often going all over the world to talk about the "love of Jesus" but ignoring the ones who are closest to us, the ones who live around the place where we live. Mission has become something that we do somewhere else. The idea of following your passions and searching for Bog Turtles close to home as part of our mission often seems absurd.

Yet, it might be the most important part of our mission. When I first became a Pastor, one of the earliest pieces of advice I received (from a retired Pastor and Missionary) was that I would now dedicate my life to things I did not want to do. My days were now to be spent on things that I was not gifted for, rather than the things for which I possessed a talent. This removal from areas where I was gifted was the life of a Pastor. It was like he was saying that God had gifted me, he had given me a set of talents and passions and had helped me to develop them; all so that one day I could become a pastor and throw all of the gifts that he had given to me away. My gifts become just a part of God's disposable creation.

For me, this is the passion of this passage. God speaks to Ezekiel and says, I am not sending you to speak to a foreign people. I am not calling you to be a Jonah and travel to Nineveh to speak to the foreigners; I am sending you to your own people, those who speak the same language you do. And not only am I sending you to them, but I also know that you have a passion for them. I am the author of that passion, and now I need you to use your passion for them as you deliver the message I am giving you.

Ezekiel is a strange book filled with strange images. But part of that arises from Ezekiel's passions, passions that God was able to use because he was willing to submit them to God. We all have passions, but sometimes we refuse to see them as opportunities for mission. McLaren, as he searches for Bog Turtles in Maryland, is every bit as much of a missionary as someone who chases all over Africa in search of the heathen (maybe more, but I might be accused of pushing it). I am thankful for the passions God has given each of us. Passions for people and things, even a passion for this world that God created. Because I have a sneaking suspicion that the earth is part of our mission, and that when the end comes, the earth will be restored rather than destroyed. God's message to each of us is that when we are chasing our passions (even our passion for turtles), we are chasing after him. And that is precisely where we want to be.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 4

You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. – Ezekiel 2:7

Today's Scripture Reading (July 26, 2026): Ezekiel 2

Former astronaut Ed Lu, a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions and an extended stay on the International Space Station, argues that the risk of a collision between Earth and a city-destroying asteroid is much higher than previously thought. And part of the problem is the small size an asteroid would need to be to level a city. NASA currently monitors space for Earth-changing asteroids 0.65 miles (3,432 feet) in diameter or bigger, which could come into close contact with our planet. But it would only take an object with a diameter of 131 feet to level a city. The problem is that we have had no idea how to monitor space for such a small object, and space seems well populated with rocks of this size. Since we don't know how to find these objects, much less what to do with them when we do find them, why worry about them? Our attitude has been that we might as well ignore the possibility until we have found a solution to the problem.

Ed Lu is talking about these objects because he thinks he has a solution to the problem. However, now he needs public opinion to swing in his favor on detecting these smaller space rocks so he can finance his solution. Ed Lu's space rocks also reveal what seems to be a disturbing trend, at least to me, in the public statements we make. Politically, scientifically, and spiritually, there appears to be a trend to speak messages that are expedient rather than true. It seems that in all areas of life, we are ignoring the small rocks we don't know what to do with. In the area where I spend most of my time (the spiritual arena), it is revealed in a reluctance to talk about what is true because it is not the truth that the people around us really want to hear. We have become the Pied Pipers of our society, just telling people what we think they want to hear. After all, some wonder what we could do with the truth even if we did know it?

Yet, knowing the truth has consistently driven us toward imaginative solutions. Repeatedly throughout history, knowing the uncomfortable truth has forced us to move in the right direction. But if we don't know the truth, we can't develop the fix the problem requires.

God tells Ezekiel to give God's message to the people, even if they aren't listening. If the truth is hidden from the exiles, it won't be because they haven't been told; it will be because they were unwilling to listen. And we stand in a similar situation. The prophets of our society need to be willing to speak the uncomfortable truth, a truth that might surprise us from a God who loves us, all of us, dearly. But if we don't understand that, it must not be because we have never been told. It has to be because we were unwilling to listen.     

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 3

In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God. - Ezekiel 1:1

Today's Scripture Reading (July 25, 2026): Ezekiel 1

In 525, a Christian monk named Dionysius Exiguus proposed dating events by referring to a common point in time. For Dionysius, because of his commitment to the Christian faith, that moment in time was the birth of Jesus Christ. Dionysius made a few mistakes in how he counted the five centuries that had passed between the birth of Jesus and his own life, and because of those mistakes, his dating is off by somewhere between four and seven years, yet the idea itself has stuck. Today we still date back to the same point in time. We call it the Common Era (or the Current Era or even the Christian Era), but it was originally called Anno Domini, or in the Year of our Lord, usually shortened to AD. The system allows us to date historical events so we can compare events across cultures, something that was once much more difficult. The last Western European nation to switch to the common calendar was Portugal, which made the change in 1422. 

The idea of dating events back to a common point is an old one. In ancient times, it was often dated to a significant event or death. The problem was that each culture chose different starting dates, and those dates changed with every generation. So, Ezekiel starts his account with a dating system, a common point in time that his readers would have understood. The NIV translates the dating very personally. Ezekiel dates his prophecy to "my thirtieth year," but it is unlikely that Ezekiel was counting the years of his own life.

For one thing, the idea of celebrating birthdays is more of a current practice. The dates of birth in ancient times were not celebrated. A better translation of the verse might be "in the thirtieth year," dating back to some common event. The problem is that while his first readers understood the connection to a common event, that event has been lost over time.

However, we can make some guesses. Ezekiel might have been dating back to the last year of Jubilee that had been celebrated in Judah. The problem with that idea is that the Jubilee celebrations in Israel were sporadic, if they were ever really celebrated at all.  Another possibility is that Ezekiel dates back to the discovery of the law during the days of Josiah. Dating the events of his life to the discovery of the law during the Temple renovations is the solution suggested by the Jewish Targum. Hilkiah found the book of the law in 621 BCE, which means that Ezekiel's vision dates to around 591 BCE, or five years before the fall of Jerusalem.

All of this indicates that Ezekiel was among those taken before the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE, and that it is in Babylon that his prophetic career begins. What is significant about this is that God finds Ezekiel far from home and the Temple dedicated to God by the Jews. Here, by a river in Babylon, Ezekiel hears the instructions of God and is compelled to follow them. The law found in the Temple thirty years earlier was still the instruction by which Ezekiel would structure his life, and the God who ruled in Jerusalem was still the God who ruled over Ezekiel and the exiles, even though they now found themselves living in a foreign land.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 2

Concerning the Ammonites: This is what the LORD says: "Has Israel no sons? Has Israel no heir? Why then has Molek taken possession of Gad? Why do his people live in its towns? – Jeremiah 49:1

Today's Scripture Reading (July 24, 2026): Jeremiah 49

Israel was always designed to operate as a theocracy, a nation where God was supposed to rule as the physical king. What we sometimes forget is that, while that is an unusual form of government, Israel would not have been the only theocracy in ancient times. Many nations were built on the idea of the "rule of the gods."  And another possible candidate for a theocracy is the Kingdom of Ammon and the Ammonites. In this case, the god in question would be Molech or Molek. But for the Ammonites, Molek was not just the name of their God; it was the name of their king. In fact, Molek seems to mean "the god who is king." Another interesting parallel between Ammon and Israel is that both nations were known as "The Children of." The people of Israel were known as "The Children of Israel," and the people of Ammon were known as "The Children of Ammon."

Gad was a Transjordanian tribe of Israel (a tribe that had settled, along with Manasseh and Reuben, on the east side of the Jordan River, while the rest of the tribes settled on the west side of the river). But the territory, which had been part of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, not Judah, was no longer a possession of the descendants of Jacob. By the time of Jeremiah, the Kingdom of Israel had long been defeated by the Assyrian Empire, and Israel had been carried into exile, now just a province of a foreign empire. Yet God still seemed to expect Judah, who represented the surviving children of Israel, to be in control of the cities of the Northern Kingdom, specifically the cities of Gad, which had long been lost to the Kingdom of Ammon. God's question is: why did Judah allow this situation to arise?

So, God's message to Judah asks the question, "Does Israel (or Jacob) have no sons? Because the cities that I gave to the children of Israel are now in the possession of the children of Molek" (either the god, the king, or both). This lack would form part of the charge against Judah; they had not had the faith to keep all that God had given to them.

It is a question that I admit that I wrestle with. Do I have the strength and the faith to keep what God has given to me? And I am not sure that I always know the answer. But I do believe that the church has become a safe church, not that it is a safe place to be, but rather, a safe place that is unwilling to risk for God. And because of that, we have lost the holy places and the people God intended for us to impact. And I wonder if at some point in the future, the question that Jeremiah asked of Judah will be asked of us. Why have you lost the ones whom I entrusted to your care?

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 1

Every head is shaved and every beard cut off; every hand is slashed and every waist is covered with sackcloth. – Jeremiah 48:37

Today's Scripture Reading (July 23, 2026): Jeremiah 48

In March 1861, Queen Victoria's mother died. Even though her relationship with her mother had been rocky, Victoria was deeply moved by the event. Victoria was at her mother's bedside when her mother died, and her feeling of loss was only intensified when she went through her mother's papers and discovered that her mother had loved her deeply. Victoria's grief was so intense that she began to disengage from even her own duties. In the months that followed in 1861, it was her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who took over her duties, despite being ill with a chronic stomach condition. And then the unthinkable happened. At the beginning of December 1861, Prince Albert was diagnosed with typhoid fever. Prince Albert died on December 14, 1861.

With the death of Albert so soon after her mother's demise, Victoria went into a permanent state of mourning. The Queen wore black for the rest of her life. The color indicated the darkness that had invaded her soul. Victoria would reign for another 40 years, but during that time, she would rarely appear in public. She rarely stepped foot in London. She shied away from all public appearances, to the point that her reputation and the Monarchy's public image began to decline. Her advisors begged her to make public appearances to remind the people that she was still the Queen of the United Kingdom, but she only agreed reluctantly. The defining feature of her life was no longer her status as the Queen of the United Kingdom and the Empress of India. Her grief now defined her life. All of this earned Victoria the nickname of "The Widow of Windsor."

Jeremiah speaks in this passage, not of humiliation as some might think, but rather of grief. In the pagan cultures surrounding Israel, each of these behaviors is associated with grief. In ancient times, in deep grief, men would pluck out their hair until they were literally bald; they would shave their beards, which were considered the "glory of their faces." They would cut themselves, especially their arms and hands, either with their fingernails or with a knife, in an attempt to relieve the pain of their souls. And they would cover themselves with sackcloth, a rough, uncomfortable fabric, to indicate to the world that they were in mourning. All of this was an outside view of an inner pain. And all of this is Jeremiah's message. Moab's pain will not just be physical; it will be emotional, and it might be that the emotional pain is more debilitating than the physical.

Sometimes we seem to be tempted to downplay our emotional pain as if it were not real. But that pain is real, and it needs to be dealt with. The truth is that our emotional pain changes more than just the way we dress; it changes the way that we react to the world. Left unacknowledged, it can remove us from life and stop us from making the difference in this world that we are intended to make. And that is simply too high a price to pay for our unaddressed pain.       

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 49

During Jehoiakim's reign, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon invaded the land, and Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years. But then he turned against Nebuchadnezzar and rebelled. – 2 Kings 24:1

Today's Scripture Reading (July 22, 2026): 2 Kings 24

Necho II reigned in Egypt during a particularly tumultuous time. The Babylonian Empire began its rise to prominence, and with the help of the Cimmerians, Scythians, and the Kingdom of Judah, it shattered the Assyrians' previous hold on the region. Necho wanted to maintain the status quo and avoid the chaos of an Empire-wide military struggle in the area, so he sent part of his army to help the Assyrians. Unfortunately, the army he had sent proved to be too small, but he learned his lesson quickly and attacked one more time, and this time he succeeded. It was this battle that would claim the life of Josiah, King of Judah.

Leaving a sizable army in the field to protect his assets, Necho returned home, and while passing through Judah, he noticed that the people had placed Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, on the throne of Judah. But Necho wanted someone more amenable to Egypt's interests in the area. So he removed Jehoahaz from the throne and took him captive to Egypt. Jehoahaz would live out the rest of his days as a guest of Necho in Egypt. In his place, Necho placed Jehoahaz's brother Jehoiakim on the throne in Judah. Jehoiakim paid Egypt an annual tribute as the price of Judah's freedom, but, in effect, the nation paid for its alliance with Babylon by becoming a vassal state of Egypt.

But in 605 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar succeeded his ailing father as king of Babylon. And one of his first acts was to invade Judah, the vassal state of Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar defeated Judah and carried off the first installment of captives to Babylon, an exile which likely included Ezekiel, Daniel, and Daniel's friends: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. For the next three years, Judah would be a vassal state under Babylonian rule.

But in 601 BCE, two significant things happened. The first was that Nebuchadnezzar returned home, leaving a sizable army in Judah, but not his personal presence. The second event was Necho II of Egypt's final attempt at world conquest, beginning with Judah. Whether Jehoiakim recognized Necho's return as an opportunity to shake off the bonds of Babylon, or whether he was moved because his brother Jehoahaz was still a captive of Necho in Egypt, Jehoiakim rebelled against Babylon. But what Judah did not recognize was that Nebuchadnezzar's rise at this time in history was an act of God to get the people's attention. It was not really Nebuchadnezzar that Necho and Jehoiakim were struggling against; it was God. Judah's continued rebellion would only solidify Nebuchadnezzar's hold over the nation.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 48

But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. So tell me the dream and interpret it for me. – Daniel 2:6

Today's Scripture Reading (July 21, 2026): Daniel 2

Nostradamus was born in December 1503 in France. He is probably the best-known of the secular prophets. His prophecies, broken down into a series of quatrains, were published in three installments between 1555 and 1558. As was common for the day, no two editions of the prophecies were identical. Some have tried to describe the differences as a prophetic emphasis, but there is no indication that this is true. Nostradamus is thought by believers to have accurately predicted many of the events that have happened since the time of the writing of the prophecies until the present day. Supporters maintain that Nostradamus correctly predicted the Great Fire of London, the rise of Adolph Hitler, and the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center.   

But the thing about any prophecy is that the prophecies always make more sense in reverse. After the events have already happened, we can recognize patterns in the unexpected waves of time. But this is not really what readers of prophecies want. What the reader of the prophecy desires is to predict the future, but even biblical prophecies seldom do that. A case in point would be the birth, life, and death of Jesus. While Jesus, the Messiah or Christ, is predicted throughout the Old Testament, the fulfillment of those prophecies was not well understood, and no one really believed that the prophecies about the Christ would turn out as they did. We see the Messianic prophecies much more clearly in retrospect than the people would have before the events happened. And sometimes, while a prediction may seem to be accurate, critics will always question whether or not the correct prediction is any more than mere coincidence.

It would seem that Nebuchadnezzar was a critic when it came to the subject of prophecy. As a result, when Nebuchadnezzar has a dream that he needs interpreted, he fears that once his wise men learn the dream, they will just make up an interpretation of the prophecy. He actively questions how he could trust a prophecy given in that manner. And so, he comes up with a plan. If the wise men could tell him the dream, as well as tell him what the dream meant, maybe then he could trust the prophecy.

This requirement that the prophet reveal the dream and its interpretation was a new idea. It would seem that this was not the usual request of a king concerning the interpretations of their dream. But the reality was that the request was impossible, something Nebuchadnezzar's wise men understood. But the presentation of an impossible situation left an opening for God. And God was ready to move through that opening.

God still moves in the impossible if we will trust him and give him that chance to move.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 24