Rebuilding

No interventions of the supernatural "miracles" are recorded in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. However, prayer, faith, courage, and hard work are on every page. In truth, God was mightily at work through these times, restoring the house of worship and the Holy City.

Nehemiah wants to show reverence for God. This is how he describes his motivation for courageous and faithful living. He knows that his behavior is an outcome of and a declaration of his faith.

God could have snapped his fingers and restored Jerusalem to its full grandeur. Instead, he moved the hearts of his people and strengthened their hands for the difficult work of rebuilding. And through the process, inch by inch, he forged stronger bonds among them and drew the people to himself.

Ezra and Nehemiah restored the worship of God. They opened the word of God and brought it to the center of worship. They read for the people all that God had done for previous generations. They reminded the people of all that God promised them and of their obligations in the covenant of love.

And they turned a nation back to God.

We all enjoy instant answers. We like immediate rewards. We chafe under the restraints of development, cultivation, delay, and incremental process.

Residents of the City of New Orleans could decide to move to bright and well-manicured suburban areas with new schools and no crime. We do not have to live in a community struggling to lift itself from the muck.

We continue the work of rebuilding our community because we believe that this community is important to our security and economy as a nation. We believe that its rich culture and heritage are important aspects of America’s soul. And we believe that God has planted us here to help shape her future through faith and good works.

We pray for revival and for the harvest of souls that will surely follow the pervasive sowing of love and good deeds here. But no instant cure for the ills of New Orleans is likely to emerge. Instead, God has called us to a long journey of courage, faith, and determination.

The journey itself must become delightful and rewarding for each of us. We must learn to celebrate the small steps taken on a daily basis. We must mark with praise and thanksgiving the turning points as they occur and as we notice them.
And we must, like Ezra and Nehemiah, find our strength and focus in the worship of God, the power of prayer, the reward of good deeds, and the healing effect of God’s word.

Jerusalem

The temple in Jerusalem was built by Solomon and destroyed by the Babylonian army in 587 B.C. The second temple in Jerusalem was built by Herod and destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.
The city of Jerusalem was destroyed as well, in both instances. Jerusalem stands today as a viable city among the cities of the world, and Israel stands as an independent nation among the nations of the world.

The crosshairs of history seem always trained upon that city which David selected as the seat of his empire. Geographically the city sits at the extreme eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. It is built on the logical path by land from Africa to Europe and from Asia to both Africa and Europe. It is an intersection of trade routes for the bulk of the planet’s land mass.

But this alone does not explain its prominence in world history or in the modern era. Jerusalem is King David’s capital for the Jews. It is the city of the prophets for the Muslims. And it is the city of Jesus’ passion for the Christians. Jerusalem, in other words, stands out among the cities on the planet as a center of religious thought and life. The majority of people in our world today may in some way be said to look to Jerusalem for their religious roots.

Sunday is the first day of this year’s Passover celebration for the Jews. We turn our thoughts to the city where God deployed his One and Only Son for the ultimate expression of love in human time and space. Here he gave the perfect Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.