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Glory to God! YHWH Shammah!

 



Ezekiel 43:5

The Lord's Spirit lifted me to my feet and carried me to the inner courtyard, where I saw that the Lord's glory had filled the temple.


Thought for the day – Glory to God

In Chapter 10 we see the God leave the Temple because of the sin of the people of Israel, and in today’s chapter in Ezekiel sees the glory of God return to his new Temple. How things have been turned around. Israel has been judged and punished and will now be redeemed and bought home. And so God is going back to the place where he will be worshipped again. Ichabod, the Spirit has departed, has become YHWH Shammah. The Lord is here. There is a nice arc to this, and I think this arc of God leaving and returning has profound implications for us as the people of God.

So much of what we’ve been reading about in Ezekiel has felt hard. It’s been brutal and disheartening. And as I’ve read Ezekiel I couldn’t help but think the Church and if Ezekiel is speaking to us as the Body of Christ. In fact a few days ago I talked about decline and extinction in the Church. Something I hear echoes of in people’s conversations about their own spiritual life. A heaviness and at times, an emptiness.

But the story doesn’t end there. Because as we read in today’s chapter, God returns. He has not abandoned his people. He has simply stepped away. He will return, he has promised that he will not forsake us. And so we will once again see his glory, and we will once again sing ‘Glory to God in the Highest!’ YHWH Shammah!


This blog post is part of the Walking the Way Podcast series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

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Location: Cwmbran, UK

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