The Bible180 challenge, week 17

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The Bible180 challenge, week 17

It's the year 520 B.C. Slowly but surely, for the past two decades, the descendants of the Israelites who were taken captive by Babylon almost a hundred years earlier have been returning to their homeland and rebuilding their cities.

Yet the Temple remains desolate - little more than a looted rubble where the palatial work of King Solomon once stood. Meanwhile the Israelites labor on their own houses and farms, in desperation trying to carve out enough living to get by. It seems impossible to find concern for the Temple when there are more immediate problems at hand.

And into this circumstance, God speaks.

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The Bible180 challenge, week 16

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The Bible180 challenge, week 16

The Holy City and the beautiful Temple have fallen.

We are in Ezekiel this week, watching as God's indignation and wrath spring to life in the amazing word pictures and object lessons of this creative prophet. Instead of the message of "Repent!" that we've spent so many weeks reading up to this point, Ezekiel brings us a message of lament over Judah's imminent judgment mixed with harsh condemnation of how she has squandered God's abundant grace time.

In 591 BC, five years before the fall of the Temple and yet well into Babylon's siege on Jerusalem, some of the leaders of Israel come to Ezekiel with the intent to inquire of the Lord for mercy - but it's far too late for that.

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The Bible180 challenge, week 15

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The Bible180 challenge, week 15

Have you noticed? Has it struck you yet, now that you're nearly one hundred days into this challenge? That sometimes - many times, I find - the Word of God is enough, all by itself?

This week we will finish the writings of the Weeping Prophet as well as those of Isaiah, and even while so much hopelessness and despair seems to cover the pages of our Bibles, God's character continues to shine as a beacon of joy, a constant guiding light in the midst of shifting circumstances.

He is still good.

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