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Category Archives: Ezekiel

Ezekiel 16:1-15

14 Aug

16 Then another message came to me from the Lord: 2 “Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable sins. 3 Give her this message from the Sovereign Lord: You are nothing but a Canaanite! Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. 4 On the day you were born, no one cared about you. Your umbilical cord was not cut, and you were never washed, rubbed with salt, and wrapped in cloth. 5 No one had the slightest interest in you; no one pitied you or cared for you. On the day you were born, you were unwanted, dumped in a field and left to die.

6 “But I came by and saw you there, helplessly kicking about in your own blood. As you lay there, I said, ‘Live!’ 7 And I helped you to thrive like a plant in the field. You grew up and became a beautiful jewel. Your breasts became full, and your body hair grew, but you were still naked. 8 And when I passed by again, I saw that you were old enough for love. So I wrapped my cloak around you to cover your nakedness and declared my marriage vows. I made a covenant with you, says the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.

9 “Then I bathed you and washed off your blood, and I rubbed fragrant oils into your skin. 10 I gave you expensive clothing of fine linen and silk, beautifully embroidered, and sandals made of fine goatskin leather. 11 I gave you lovely jewelry, bracelets, beautiful necklaces, 12 a ring for your nose, earrings for your ears, and a lovely crown for your head. 13 And so you were adorned with gold and silver. Your clothes were made of fine linen and costly fabric and were beautifully embroidered. You ate the finest foods—choice flour, honey, and olive oil—and became more beautiful than ever. You looked like a queen, and so you were! 14 Your fame soon spread throughout the world because of your beauty. I dressed you in my splendor and perfected your beauty, says the Sovereign Lord.

15 “But you thought your fame and beauty were your own. So you gave yourself as a prostitute to every man who came along. Your beauty was theirs for the asking.

Ezekiel 16:1-15

Dear God, we are all so small and weak. That you look on us at all is…well, gracious. Your grace is amazing. The should write songs about it (sarcasm implied).

Verse 15 is where I want to focus today. I’m heading into a boar retreat tomorrow. The nonprofit where I work has a lot going for it. We are in the middle of an expansion that is fully funded (thanks to you). We have enough resources to do the work we need to do (thanks to you). That includes not only financial resources, but also staff. It’s not easy to find a doctor, dentist, hygienist, bilingual therapist, nurses, etc. in a rural community, and yet here we are with all of these things. Thanks to you.

I was talking with the consultant who will work with us tomorrow, and telling her about our current status. I was proud of it. And I’ll admit that my temptation is to want to take credit for it, pat myself on the back and, to put it in terms of verse 15, think my beauty is my own. Will my vanity and ego cause me to leave you?

Father, I acknowledge that everything I have, both personally and profressionally, is from you. Right now, I feel very impotent when it comes to how to respond to the pain I see in people’s lives around me. I see immigrants, even legal ones, who are afraid and feel persecuted. Help me to know how to help. Give me ears to hear and eyes to see. I give you glory. Help me to point our board of directors towards you tomorrow morning. All glory be yours, Father, forever and ever.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen

 
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Posted by on August 14, 2026 in Ezekiel

 

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Ezekiel 36:16-28

23 Mar

16 Again the word of the Lord came to me: 17 “Son of man, when the people of Israel were living in their own land, they defiled it by their conduct and their actions. Their conduct was like a woman’s monthly uncleanness in my sight. 18 So I poured out my wrath on them because they had shed blood in the land and because they had defiled it with their idols. 19 I dispersed them among the nations, and they were scattered through the countries; I judged them according to their conduct and their actions. 20 And wherever they went among the nations they profaned my holy name, for it was said of them, ‘These are the Lord’s people, and yet they had to leave his land.’ 21 I had concern for my holy name, which the people of Israel profaned among the nations where they had gone.

22 “Therefore say to the Israelites, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. 23 I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.

24 “‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. 28 Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. 

Ezekiel 36:16-38

Dear God, you long for us so much! That’s the weirdest thing about you , in my mind. You long for us so much. I long for my children in a huge way, but you long for us even more. You want us. You want to restore us. You want relationship with us. You want our worship, but it’s so you can pour yourself into us. If you poured yourself into us without our worship, the consequences would be terrible. Who would I be if you just poured yourself into me without me first submitting myself to you? But the big picture is that you want this. It’s so weird!

As I sit here in Kansas this morning, with several hours before I leave for the airport, I have some options. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. But it’s Sunday. I have a rental car. While I was talking to my wife on the phone this morning, the thought occurred to me, “Why wouldn’t I go to church?” Good question. At home, my wife is Catholic so I attend Catholic church with her, but I’m out here on my own this morning. I can choose whatever I want. So here’s the weird thing. As I looked up churches around me, I found myself being skeptical of worship styles and what I would like and what I wouldn’t, so I ultimately decided it would probably be best if I find a Catholic church.. So I found one less than two miles from me, and I am planning to hit the 8:30 mass. If nothing else, I have a pretty good idea what it will be like, and I know I’ll be able to worship you there.

Father, I want to find a place to corporately worship you this morning. This isn’t for appearances. This isn’t duty. It’s need on my part. Sure, I don’t have to do it, and maybe my day will be fine, but I will be better if I do this. If I find myself worshipping you through joining others to read your word, sing songs to you, and hear a homily prepared by someone who loves you. I will watch others as they take the eucharist, knowing I’m not really that different from the Catholics in the room, but respectful of how they feel about the importance of the eucharist and that I shouldn’t partake if I don’t believe in transubstantiation. I’m looking forward to this. It won’t guarantee me a good day, but it will be a touchpoint with you as I go through my day, and it will give me a better shot of responding in your love and with your Spirit when challenges arise. Be with me today.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen

 
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Posted by on March 23, 2025 in Ezekiel, Restore: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation

 

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Ezekiel 18:23

14 Mar

23 Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live? 

Ezekiel 18:23

Dear God, I think I am going to try something different today when I use the passage from Restore: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation by Sr. Miriam James Heidland. Instead of looking at the passage and praying on it, I’m going to start with reading what she has to say about it.

I really like her first paragraph:

As Adam and Eve are shattered in the garden by their decision to listen to the enemy and not to rely upon the truth of who God is, so are we. We hold God in suspicion, we blame him, we try to create our own reality apart from him, and we fear being seen by him. We fear being seen by the only one who can actually do anything to heal us.

I’ve mentioned a couple of times now the video I saw of Dustin Hoffman quoting Robert De Niro on what he would say to you if he were to meet you on the other side of this life. According to Hoffman, De Niro’s quote was, “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.” First, I doubt he would have the courage to say that if presented with your presence. No way. But just the thought of that animosity towards you goes back to this in some way. I mean, I understand being upset with you and how you do things. I understand legitimate awful things going on in the world that upset us and lead us to ask why you would allow such a thing (e.g., war, human trafficking, hunger, etc.). I’ve been disappointed with you in the past. But what would I have you do? What would we have you do differently? Where would the mighty hand of your justice end? Could any of us justify our survival?

Father, her is Sr. Miriam’s last paragraph. I offer it to you as my prayer:

When we spend time with God in prayer listening, receiving, speaking, pondering, and responding, our lives are changed. As we drink deeply from the scriptures and let this living Word settle into the marrow of our souls, the poison of sin and lies is drawn out. As we meditate and contemplate upon who God is and engage in conversation with him, our stony hearts are softened and made new. As we confess our sin and weaknesses and ask for his heart to meet us in our misery, new light dawns.

So draw out the poison of sin and lies in my heart. Meet me in my misery. Bring a new light into my life today.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen

 
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Posted by on March 14, 2025 in Ezekiel, Restore: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation

 

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Ezekiel 28:1-10

20 Aug

28 Then this message came to me from the Lord: 2 “Son of man, give the prince of Tyre this message from the Sovereign Lord:

“In your great pride you claim, ‘I am a god!
    I sit on a divine throne in the heart of the sea.’
But you are only a man and not a god,
    though you boast that you are a god.
3 You regard yourself as wiser than Daniel
    and think no secret is hidden from you.
4 With your wisdom and understanding you have amassed great wealth—
    gold and silver for your treasuries.
5 Yes, your wisdom has made you very rich,
    and your riches have made you very proud.

6 “Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says:
Because you think you are as wise as a god,
7     I will now bring against you a foreign army,
    the terror of the nations.
They will draw their swords against your marvelous wisdom
    and defile your splendor!
8 They will bring you down to the pit,
    and you will die in the heart of the sea,
    pierced with many wounds.
9 Will you then boast, ‘I am a god!’
    to those who kill you?
To them you will be no god
    but merely a man!
10 You will die like an outcast
    at the hands of foreigners.
    I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!”

Ezekiel 28:1-10

Dear God, I feel very convicted by this passage this morning. At first, I was reading it and thinking judgmentally about the Israelites. Then I started to notice your mocking tone through Ezekiel. Then I felt like the Holy Spirit nudged me that I might be closer to seeing myself as a god than I would like to admit.

It mainly comes at work lately. We are looking at a facility expansion at work. It will require a multi-million dollar capital campaign. We had a consultant work with us, and we mapped out where the money would come from. Whom could we ask? How much might they give? Names and numbers were assigned. But it was all about my wisdom. My persuasion. My ability. My charisma. My charm.

Two summers ago, when we first started talking about expanding our facility, I leaned into the story of Hezekiah from 2 Kings 18. The enemy is on its way. They are threatening Jerusalem. Hezekiah is scared. He prays to you. He throws himself down on the ground before you. Then he hears from you through Isaiah that the enemy won’t even fire an arrow at the city. Ultimately, you pull off something miraculous that only you could do. At the time, I felt like you told me, “Don’t worry about the money for this. The money will come.” But here I am two years later, worrying about the money and leaning on myself to find it.

Father, everything good I have comes from you. And the sorrows and struggles in my life are even working to form me into who you want me to be. I have a long way to go, but here I am, this Tuesday morning, sitting before you to worship, bow down, and say that you are my God. You are the God. You are God. I am sorry for my lack of faith. I am sorry for my tendency to lean on myself instead of dying to myself and leaning on you. I love you, Lord. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for speaking to me this morning and nudging me towards this passage and through this passage. Thank you Jesus for loving me and caring for me. Thank you for molding me.

I offer all of this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

Amen

 
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Posted by on August 20, 2024 in Ezekiel

 

Ezekiel 16:1-19

17 Aug

16 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices 3 and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says to Jerusalem: Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. 4 On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. 5 No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.

6 “‘Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Live!” 7 I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew and developed and entered puberty. Your breasts had formed and your hair had grown, yet you were stark naked.

8 “‘Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your naked body. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.

9 “‘I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. 10 I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put sandals of fine leather on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. 11 I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, 12 and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. 13 So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was honey, olive oil and the finest flour. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. 14 And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord.

15 “‘But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. You lavished your favors on anyone who passed by and your beauty became his. 16 You took some of your garments to make gaudy high places, where you carried on your prostitution. You went to him, and he possessed your beauty. 17 You also took the fine jewelry I gave you, the jewelry made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them. 18 And you took your embroidered clothes to put on them, and you offered my oil and incense before them. 19 Also the food I provided for you—the flour, olive oil and honey I gave you to eat—you offered as fragrant incense before them. That is what happened, declares the Sovereign Lord.

Ezekiel 16:1-19

Dear God, it is always interesting to see you in lament. I mean, I have plenty of times that I lament. But the fact that you lament over us is striking. I read this passage yesterday while attending mass with my wife, and the blatant expression of pain and anger by you, the sense of betrayal you show in this passage, is really quite something.

I was listening to a sermon today where the preacher was asking, “What does winning look like?” He started talking about how Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, would go into a depression the day after an Olympic Games was over. Then he compared it to Elijah the day after he called on you and experienced the great victory of Baal and the Israelites turned back to you, only to end up hiding from the Queen and King and asking you to kill him. He experienced that letdown of the post-victory. I’m bringing this around to this passage because the preacher then talked about a couple who asked themselves what success as parents looked like and they decided that success was children who would want to come home and visit them as adults. It surprised me that he used that as an example, because by that measure, you are a failure as our parent in so many ways. I am a failure as well.

So you experience pain when I’m not with you. When I take you for granted. When I go my own way. That’s amazing. And then you still want us back. You still want me back:

59 “‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant. 60 Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. 61 Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you receive your sisters, both those who are older than you and those who are younger. I will give them to you as daughters, but not on the basis of my covenant with you. 62 So I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord. 63 Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign Lord.’”

Ezekiel 16:59-63

Father, I am ashamed when I walk away from you. I am grateful for the atonement you made for me. I am humbled by it. I know this specific word isn’t for me specifically. It was for Israel. I get that. And I don’t pretend to be Israel in your eyes. I don’t pretend that the United States, where I am a citizen, is Israel in your eyes. But I know that through your love for all of us that I have the capacity to hurt you just as the Israelites hurt you. And I do not want that. For you because I love you so much. But I’m also self-aware enough to know that I need you for my sake. What does “winning” in life look like for me? That was the question the preacher asked. For me, winning looks like having your peace as I live in you and you use me. If I’ve hit my peak. If my most influential actions are behind me or still to come, that doesn’t mean you don’t still have meaningful things for me to do. For Elijah, you still had a couple of kings and a prophet for him to anoint. His work wasn’t done. So I give you this day. Help me to be what you need my wife, my children, and my friends to have from me.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen

 
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Posted by on August 17, 2024 in Ezekiel

 

Ezekiel 24:15-19

11 Aug

15 Then this message came to me from the Lord: 16 “Son of man, with one blow I will take away your dearest treasure. Yet you must not show any sorrow at her death. Do not weep; let there be no tears. 17 Groan silently, but let there be no wailing at her grave. Do not uncover your head or take off your sandals. Do not perform the usual rituals of mourning or accept any food brought to you by consoling friends.”

18 So I proclaimed this to the people the next morning, and in the evening my wife died. The next morning I did everything I had been told to do. 19 Then the people asked, “What does all this mean? What are you trying to tell us?”

Ezekiel 24:15-19

Dear God, if ever there was a passage the demonstrated how our lives are not about us, it is this one. Perhaps Ezekiel’s wife was going to die anyway and you were just letting him know, but to dictate that he not publicly mourn her passing so that you could demonstrate to the Israelites your feelings about their indifference for you is palpable.

Ninety percent of my life is pretty soft, but there is a portion that has been hard and difficult. And I’ve tended to dwell on and complain about the 10% more than I’ve worshipped you and been grateful for the 90%. At the same time, over the last few years, I’ve tried to consider that you might be doing something in the 10% that I cannot see. Therefore, my prayer to you has been to make it count.

Father, Holy Spirit, my Comforter, my Counselor, my Convictor, my Lord, my God, I ask that you make the pain count. For my friends who are sick or suffering, I ask that you heal them, of course. Touch their bodies. Touch their souls. Touch their minds. Touch their hearts. Please, heal them and bring them close to you. And do not waste this experience. Do not waste this pain. Please, make this pain count. Make it count for my life and their lives. Use it to draw us closer to you. Use it to lead us into deeper worship of you. Use it to bring your kingdom and will into the earth. Use it for our good. Show me today what you would have me do or say.

In and through Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen

 
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Posted by on August 11, 2022 in Ezekiel