RETURNING FROM LOSS (23 OF 49)
Scripture: Ezekiel 37:1-14
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Returning From Loss (23 of 49)
Series: Lectionary, Year B
Christopher B. Harbin
Ezekiel 37:1-14
It is all too easy for us to lose hope when things don't go our way. Despair and disappointment all too readily work together to send us into a tailspin. We talk about placing our hope in God, but messages all around us would tell us not even God can get us past the obstacles in our way. How can we bear witness to hope when our lives are beset with loss? How can we encourage others when grief threatens to block any future? How can we move beyond the cloud of despair when there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel? How can we rediscover hope amid encroaching darkness?
Judah was living in exile. They had lost the land Yahweh had promised them. They had been stripped of autonomy. Those of wealth, power, and influence had been carted off as a nation, essentially enslaved for the benefit of their enemies. Nothing was as it should be. The exiles had to learn a new language to interact with their overlords. They had to adapt to new ways of being and doing, all the while struggling over why they had deserved the punishment of exile. Words like loss and grief did not begin to explain and address what it meant to live as spoils of war, forced to labor to expand the strength and wealth of a hated enemy.
They were broken as a nation. Despair, doubt, and the loss of all hope had quickly settled upon them in the early years of exile. That blanket of shame had not lifted. Yahweh did not appear interested in revisiting their plight and redeeming them as their forbearers had been ushered out of bondage in Egypt. Sure, the prophets had told them in no uncertain terms of their failure to care for the economic needs of the poor, widows, and orphans in their midst. Sure, they had been called out for failing to see the needy around them as their equals, as beloved of Yahweh. Now, however, they could not see a way back. There was no path for redeeming themselves. There w ...
Series: Lectionary, Year B
Christopher B. Harbin
Ezekiel 37:1-14
It is all too easy for us to lose hope when things don't go our way. Despair and disappointment all too readily work together to send us into a tailspin. We talk about placing our hope in God, but messages all around us would tell us not even God can get us past the obstacles in our way. How can we bear witness to hope when our lives are beset with loss? How can we encourage others when grief threatens to block any future? How can we move beyond the cloud of despair when there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel? How can we rediscover hope amid encroaching darkness?
Judah was living in exile. They had lost the land Yahweh had promised them. They had been stripped of autonomy. Those of wealth, power, and influence had been carted off as a nation, essentially enslaved for the benefit of their enemies. Nothing was as it should be. The exiles had to learn a new language to interact with their overlords. They had to adapt to new ways of being and doing, all the while struggling over why they had deserved the punishment of exile. Words like loss and grief did not begin to explain and address what it meant to live as spoils of war, forced to labor to expand the strength and wealth of a hated enemy.
They were broken as a nation. Despair, doubt, and the loss of all hope had quickly settled upon them in the early years of exile. That blanket of shame had not lifted. Yahweh did not appear interested in revisiting their plight and redeeming them as their forbearers had been ushered out of bondage in Egypt. Sure, the prophets had told them in no uncertain terms of their failure to care for the economic needs of the poor, widows, and orphans in their midst. Sure, they had been called out for failing to see the needy around them as their equals, as beloved of Yahweh. Now, however, they could not see a way back. There was no path for redeeming themselves. There w ...
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