Walking the Way: A daily devotional

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...

  Ezekiel 17:23 On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches.   Thought for the day – What is your purpose? Ezekiel’s vision is a vision of an eagle plucking the choicest leaves from a tree and planting it. It grows and grows and becomes this fantastic tree that provides shelter in the shade of it’s branches. That’s not where the vision ends but God comes back to it at the end of the chapter. And it got me thinking about what the purpose of a tree is and then what our purpose is, as our churches being places where those who are vulnerable and marginalised can find shelter. And I’m not being all social justice here. This is one of the purposes of the church. Scripture is clear about this. Right from the formation of Israel, the widow, the orphan and the foreigner have always been in the forefront of the p...

Ezekiel 16:60 Nevertheless I will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you.   Thought for the day – A Covenant That Holds In 1755, John Wesley held the first Covenant Service. He gathered ordinary Methodists — miners, weavers, servants — and asked them to renew their promise to God for the year ahead. It became a tradition we still keep: "I am no longer my own, but yours." It's a sacred prayer. But if we're honest, most years we walk into it fully aware of how badly we kept last year's promise. And that’s the backdrop of our verse today. Ezekiel 16 is one of the hardest chapters in the Bible — a long, account of Israel's unfaithfulness, spelled out in graphic detail. God isn't gentle about it. And yet, right in the middle of that catalogue of failure, we get this: "Nevertheless I will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlast...

  Ezekiel 15:2  “Son of man, how is the wood of the vine better than any other wood, the vine branch which is among the trees of the forest?  Thought for the day – Just a Piece of Wood We used to have a house that had a grape vine in the garden. Every year it would grow and try to take over the garden and every year we would cut it back. What struck me was just how soft vine wood is. It had the structural integrity of paper. Vine wood, it turns out, is good for exactly one thing: bearing fruit. Take that away, and you're left with something too soft to build with and too brittle to carve. Not even sturdy enough to hang a cup on. God says the same of His people here, and I confess it lands a little close to home at the moment — especially in ministry. It's tempting, when you've been doing this a while, to find your worth in the role: the collar, the title, the years served, the meetings chaired. But Ezekiel won't let us get away with that. Cut off from fruitfulness, none...

Ezekiel 14:6  “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Repent, turn away from your idols, and turn your faces away from all your abominations.  Thought for the day – Repent In our last episode we looked at the weak walls that we build as a façade to protect ourselves, and how God ha promised to tear them down. Our verse today places our motivations and our sacred cows firmly in the firing line. Our chapter today is God calling the people of Israel away from idolatry. We’ve talked about idolatry before on the WTW and I’ve always defines idolatry as the things we choose before God. The things that that stop us from worshipping and serving God to the full because they are more important than God. And this speaks to our motivations, our desires and our fears. In our verse today, we are called to repent, turn away from our idols, and turn our faces away from all our abominations. Strong words, but they are an indication of God’s feeling towards our sacred co...

Ezekiel 13:14 So I will break down the wall you have plastered with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that its foundation will be uncovered; it will fall, and you shall be consumed in the midst of it. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.   Thought for the day – Weak walls There’s a thought-provoking image in this prophecy from Ezekiel. God is challenging the false prophets that said that Ezekiel’s prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem was a lie.  He's presenting those lies as weak walls. The idea here is that they may look solid, but actual fact, there is nothing to them. And as I was thinking about this verse this morning, it really hit home to me because It got me thinking about what we present to people to stop people thinking we might be weak. And maybe God is challenging that in us today. God is saying to us, you cannot have any pretense. You cannot put up any walls that might hide the fact that you are struggling, That you might be deceiving ...

  Ezekiel 12:18 “Son of man, eat your bread with quaking, and drink water with trembling and with anxiety.   Thought for the day – Trembling Bread It's a strange order from God. Ezekiel isn't told to warn Jerusalem with words this time — he's told to become the warning. Eat your dinner shaking. Drink your water like your hands won't quite hold the cup. Do it now, while there's still bread on the table, so the people can see what's coming before it arrives. It reminds me of Corrie ten Boom's account of her family's meals during the Nazi occupation of Haarlem, while they were hiding Jewish refugees upstairs. She wrote of dinners eaten with one ear tuned to the stairs, bread passed around a table where safety was never guaranteed — an ordinary meal turned into an act of quiet endurance, because nobody knew if this was the meal that would be interrupted. That's what God is doing through Ezekiel — pulling the coming disaster out of the abstrac...

  Ezekiel 10:19 And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh   Thought for the day – New beginnings In our last episode, we talked about things coming to an end. I talked about Ichabod and how it meant the glory had departed, or no glory. And yet in our verse today, God is promising that actually there will be new things happening. How as the old things come to an end, new things begin. The promise is that God will give them a new heart. That he would give them a new spirit. That he would remove the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. The idea here is that rather than the rigid structures of religiosity ,God would give them a living, beating,   heart built on the relationship with Him.   And so after our conversation about God's glory departing his church and the death of the structures around us, I think this verse gives ...