… so that the kingdom would be brought low, unable to rise again, surviving only by keeping his treaty. – Ezekiel 17:14

Today's Scripture Reading (June 25, 2023): Ezekiel 17

Chris Christie, as he announced his candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination for the 2024 election, began the announcement of his White House run by arguing that the United States had gotten smaller. According to Christie, this smallness started during the reign of President Barak Obama and continued during the administrations of Donald Trump and Joseph Biden. We no longer meet with people with whom we disagree; the current trend is that we only have the time to meet with people with whom we agree, and because of that, we ensure that we never meet anyone who might challenge us. Our world is getting smaller and smaller, and we are letting it happen.

It is something about which I have been teaching over the past few years. We don't want diversity; we want unity. In fact, it isn't even unity that we are pursuing; it is unison. We want everyone to act the same way and believe the same things. We exile all those who think differently than we do because we have no room for them on our self-built islands. As a result, we are never challenged by a truth we don't already believe. And our world gets smaller.

And I'm not too fond of the movement. I want a diverse group of people gathered around me. I might not like it, but I must be challenged with new ideas. And I need to learn to love people who are different from me. We don't need the small; we need our world to get bigger.

God talks about eagles and trees, but his point was that the people needed to understand that what Nebuchadnezzar was doing was to make Israel small. He took some people away and planted them in a foreign land. Others, scared, left the land where they had been born to go and hide in other nations, and Israel got smaller. A Nebuchadnezzar placed a member of the Royal family on the throne and forced him into a treaty with Babylon, and that king lost the ability to choose the path for the nation. And Israel got smaller. And the result of all of this was that the kingdom would be laid low and unable to rise again. It had become too small.

To my friends who walk with me, we can't let this happen to us. We need to get bigger. We need to heal the splits and continue to challenge each other on this shared journey we are walking. We need to learn to disagree with love and follow Jesus with all the boldness of a people who have been called to follow him and reflect his nature to a world that needs him. I know we have differences, but as long as we are following the one who died in our stead, we are on the right path. And the only way we can get home is by banding together and refusing to get smaller.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 18