Walking the Way: A daily devotional

Ezekiel 26:5 It shall become, in the midst of the sea, a place for spreading nets. I have spoken, says the Lord God. Thought for the day – When the walls come down Today’s verse has been described as one of the most accurately verifiable prophecies we have. And while there is some debate about how the prophecy was fulfilled Tyre was eventually destroyed by Alexander the Great. Tyre had two parts, the land city and the bit on an island. The city was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar for 13 years and was never fully destroyed until Alexander arrived, tore down the land city and used the material to build a causeway to finally tear down the island part of Tyre in 322 BC. And so finally Tyre did become a place where fishing nets were spread out. And it’s downfall was the result of the same hubris that was shown by Ammon, Moab and Edom.  Tyre was apparently secure. It’s walls and the sea gave it a real sense of security that was real and tangible. And it got me thinking about the things that w...

  Ezekiel 25:5 I will make Rabbah a pasture for camels and Ammon a fold for flocks. Then you shall know that I am the Lord. Thought for the day – What goes around comes around Have you ever caught yourself smiling at someone else's downfall? Not proud of it. But there it is — that little flicker of satisfaction when the arrogant get humbled, when the bully finally loses. That's exactly the mood God is confronting here. Ammon had watched Jerusalem burn and the temple fall, and instead of grief, they said "Aha!" They clapped. Judah's tragedy was Ammon's entertainment. So God speaks — not against Judah this time, but against the gloating. Rabbah, Ammon's proud capital, would become nothing more than a camel pasture. The mockers would become the punchline. I think of Winston Churchill, drafting his maxims for the Second World War. He didn't write "in victory, celebration." He wrote ‘in victory, magnanimity’. He'd watched what triumphalism doe...

Ezekiel 24:16 “Mortal man,” he said, “with one blow I am going to take away the person you love most. You are not to complain or cry or shed any tears.   Thought for the day – at what cost? I wonder what went through Ezekiel’s mind when he heard God speak today. When he heard that God was going to take his wife suddenly and he was not allowed to grieve for her? I simply can’t imagine what he went through. And in some respects, Ezekiel’s story reminds of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. And on a deeper theological level, God must have known what he was asking Ezekiel to do, as he gave up his only son for us.   And as hard as God’s command to Ezekiel to is, the bigger question for us is: what is the cost of following God. Would we be willing to accept what God was doing for the greater cause of the Kingdom? If God told us he was going to take away our livelihood, how would we react? If God told us he was going to take away our church, how would we react? ...

  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...