Good Ol' Zeke

I try to read through the Bible once a year or so, in addition to other studies. For instance, I studied Ezra recently. Now, my small group is studying Galatians. (Of course, since our leader is my dear husband, we are not using a hold-your-hand-tell-you-what-it-means nice tidy study guide. He is making us chart the whole book! It's fun, actually. Challenging, but fun.) In my progress through the Bible, I am using the chronological Bible, a favorite way for me to read the Bible. I am in Ezekiel. Such an intriguing book. This guy did some crazy stuff, all because the Lord asked him to do it. He also saw some stuff that he had a hard time putting into words. He actually saw the throne of God! I really do consider Ezekiel to be an odd book. I don't recommend it for uplifting reading or for an easy-to-digest read. I do recommend reading it, however. This guy left a normal looking life with wild abandon just to work for God. Nothing about him looked normal. He didn't act normal. He didn't talk normally. He completely stood out, and not in a fun way. The early part of his book records him basically receiving his call from the Lord and then being really overwhelmed and fearful of it. He tried to just sit down and ignore it, but the hand of the Lord was upon him and the Lord just didn't let that happen. I can relate....

We all get calls on our life from the Lord. Calls to walk a certain path at a certain time. They can be an overwhelming and fearful thing. I think his call is the hardest when we look at the path, the unknown. Our knees go weak, our hearts falter, our wills rebel. Zeke had an unbelievably hard call, but he SAW the throne of God. When he looked at God, he followed God's call.

I supposed it's all about where we are looking.

(Just for grins, read Ezekiel sometime and look at how many times the name "Sovereign LORD" comes up. Over and over and over.....I challenge you to look up what it means in the Hebrew and really ponder why this is the overwhelmingly favorite title of God in Zeke's book and what that means for you. A teenage friend of mine first pointed this out to me.)