Walking the Way: A daily devotional

  Ezekiel 23:35 Now this is what the Sovereign Lord is saying: “Because you forgot me and turned your back on me, you will suffer for your lust and your prostitution.” Thought for the day – Consequences I don’t know about anyone else at the moment, but I’m finding Ezekiel rather heavy going at the moment. Imagine being Ezekiel and being the messenger of bad news upon worse news. But today’s chapter really is taking it to a new level. God describes Israel and Judah as sisters and prostitutes. In very graphic detail. And I found myself asking the question why? Not why is God describing them like this, but why were they unfaithful to God. I suppose that’s one of those eternal questions. The easy answer is they were sinful. Yes, but all have fallen short according to Paul in Romans. But that’s not necessarily it. There was something else scratching at my brain. The thing that was scratching at the back of my brain was how far do we have to push God for God to do what he did to Israel a...

Ezekiel 22:11 Some commit adultery, and others seduce their daughters-in-law or their half-sisters.   Thought for the day – Fauxcest This is going to be one of the few posts that I’m going to say are for adults alone. So if the kids are nearby, maybe read this somewhere else. A few weeks ago I read an article on the rise of something called ‘fauxcest’. Apparently, it’s a thing. Fauxcest, or fictional incest porn, has been one of the fastest growing X-rated genres in recent years. It seems that one of the most universally accepted taboos incest is being normalised through online porn that is freely available to anyone with an internet connection. But this isn’t actually all that new. In 1524, an Italian writer named Pietro Aretino used the new technology of the printing press to mass-produce explicit sonnets — among the first pornography Europe had seen at scale. The lust wasn't new. The reach was. That's the pattern: give an old appetite a faster delivery system, and it stops ...

Ezekiel 21:6 Therefore groan, son of man! Groan before them with broken heart and bitter grief.   Thought for the day – Amputations In his book, ‘A grief observed’, the author CS Lewis writes that the death of a beloved is an amputation. It's not something we get over, it's something we learned to live with. Lewis is writing about the death of his wife Joy and is a remarkably different book to his previous book on suffering called ‘The problem of pain’. Because for Lewis it was no longer theoretical, or even theological, it was personal. Grief had hit home in a way that he could never have imagined. Many of you who listen to ‘Walking the Way’ will know that we as a family experienced our own loss a few years ago when my mom died. And as someone who, like Lewis, thought they were a bit of an expert on the subject of grief, pain and suffering, for me, like Lewis, it was no longer theoretical; it was very real. And while our verse today from Ezekiel, isn't about pe...

Ezekiel 20:12 Also I gave them my Sabbaths as a sign between us, so they would know that I the Lord made them holy. Thought for the day – Holy days Christians have always been a bit awkward about the Sabbath. Saturday or Sunday, take your pick — we've argued about it for centuries. It's meant to be a day of rest, a day when we down tools completely. For our Jewish brothers and sisters, that's exactly what happens: nothing happens, full stop. We don't hold it quite so tightly. And I wonder if that's because we've never really understood what the Sabbath is for. In today's verse, God tells Ezekiel that He gave His people the Sabbaths as a sign between them and Him, so they would know that the Lord sanctifies them. Read that again. We don't have a Sabbath because a day is holy. We have a Sabbath because we are holy — the Lord has made us so. Not the day. The people. That's not nothing. It means our worship, whatever day we land on, is where our holiness...

Ezekiel 19:9 With hooks they pulled him into a cage     and brought him to the king of Babylon. They put him in prison,     so his roar was heard no longer     on the mountains of Israel.   Thought for the day – The Lion in the Cage and the Lion on the Throne Ezekiel 19 is not a comfortable read. It's a funeral song for kings. God tells Ezekiel to take up a lament for the princes of Israel — pictured as lion cubs raised by a lioness, growing into fierce, capable predators. And then verse 9: "With hooks he pulled him into a cage and brought him to the king of Babylon. He was placed in prison, so his roar was heard no longer on the mountains of Israel" (NIV). The lion that once made kingdoms tremble ends up as an exhibit. Muzzled. Paraded. Silent. We actually know this isn't just poetry. Archaeologists digging in Babylon found ration tablets listing "Yau-kin, king of Judah" among the palace's captive dependents —...

Ezekiel 18:2 Yet the Israelites say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Are my ways unjust, people of Israel? Is it not your ways that are unjust? Thought for the day – Say what? What is it about our faith, our Christian faith, that makes us special? I can tell you the things it's not, it's not the rules, it's not the buildings, it's not even our communities, what makes Christianity special is the fact that we have a God who holds us accountable but in ways that allows us to be free of our past. You may well be thinking, Ray, what are you talking about? In our verse today, God is challenging the understandings of the people of Israel, particularly the understanding that the sins of the fathers are persecuted on the children of the next few generations, and God is saying, no, that is not the case, the accountability lies with the person committing the sin, so the person who commits the sin will face the punishment, the person who does not sin will not face punishment, th...