I will dry up the waters of the Nile and sell the land to an evil nation; by the hand of foreigners I will lay waste the land and everything in it. I the LORD have spoken. – Ezekiel 30:12

Today's Scripture Reading (July 2, 2020): Ezekiel 30

Atheists argue that God is silent because he is not there. The problem of God's silence is something with which even Christians struggle. But then God speaks, and everything changes. I have to admit that I have known both God's silence and his voice. And at times, both can be perplexing. When he is silent, I often am left wondering why? God, I need to hear from you as we face this time of testing. What should I do, what can I do, to bring honor to you even now?

And then he speaks. With me, it is never an audible voice. God seems to like to well up inside of me. He challenges my thinking, inviting me into the struggle in a different way. With me, he stresses his deep love for humankind, all of us, and not just the portion with which I might be comfortable. He places me in unusual situations and then seems to sit back and ask, "Now what are you going to do?" And he laughs at some of my solutions and probably cries at others. But it is his laughter that shapes me the deepest. In those moments, I know that he is there.

Ezekiel prophecies that the water of the Nile would dry up and that the land would be handed over to foreigners who would use everything and leave nothing but a wasteland. I would love to be able to point to a moment in history and say this was when that happened. But the truth is that we cannot find the moment when this reality took place. Maybe we are still looking forward to this event as something that has yet to happen.

Some argue that this is already a part of Egyptian history, even though we cannot pinpoint the time when this prophecy was fulfilled. And they say that, while we cannot pinpoint an event, we do know that the belief structure of the Egyptians changed. These Egyptians, who worshipped at the altar of their River and who seemed to worship everything that they found in their environment, suddenly shifted away from the practice of worshiping their environment. They lost their worship of the River that brought life to the civilization. And experts have wondered why.

For some, the answer was predicted by Ezekiel. The waters of the Nile, for a period, stopped their flooding cycles, the desert returned to the valley, and the people were mystified by the silence of their gods. And when their gods refused to speak, they lost their interest in the impotent gods of the River that no longer could bring life to the valley, and went on to seek other deities to worship, and kneel down before, as they lived out their lives beside the waters of the Nile.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 31