Yet there will be some survivors—sons and daughters who will be brought out of it. They will come to you, and when you see their conduct and their actions, you will be consoled regarding the disaster I have brought on Jerusalem—every disaster I have brought on it. – Ezekiel 14:22

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 4, 2017) Ezekiel 14

Survivor’s guilt appears to be a universal phenomenon. It seems in every culture and society. It doesn’t matter if the trauma is a result of human conflict or nature’s storms. Whenever one survives while others die, the possibility for Survivor’s guilt is present. It has been reported among Holocaust survivors and war veterans. Even transplant recipients have reported feeling it. Survivor’s guilt is the ever-present question of why was it that I survived while someone else did not. It is the overwhelming feeling that if I had been where I was supposed to be, then, I would be dead with them. 

The feeling is not a reaction of glee at receiving the winning hand as a result of the luck of the draw, but rather the intense feelings that the life that is still in the person’s possession should have been forfeit. I should be dead. And the effect can last a lifetime. Intensifying the feeling is the reality that survivor’s guilt is one thing about which we don’t talk. We suffer in silence and alone with this feeling of being guilty for being alive. The guilt feelings drive us into more and more dangerous pursuits in the subconscious hope that maybe we can die too.

There has been some disagreement over this passage in Ezekiel. Biblical Scholars stress that this is a passage about judgment. The remnant that Ezekiel writes about here is not the righteous remnant spoken of in other places in the Bible. These are the guilty who have somehow survived. But the reaction that surprises me most to this passage is that some scholars insist that this passage is not about grace and mercy. I disagree. This passage is all about grace and mercy. These sons and daughters are rescued in spite of their guilt. They have been taken from their homeland, which must have been a traumatic experience, and forced to live in a strange land, but that unwanted action is what will save them. Life is given when there should have been only death.

And Ezekiel? He will be consoled. It is a strange comment in the midst of the disaster that seems to surround the prophet of God. But in the midst of all that has gone and is going wrong, the rescue of these sons and daughters are evidence of the mercy and grace of God. Their rescue is also proof that God is not done with Israel. Not yet. He still has a plan for the future. A plan filled with more grace and more mercy.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 15