An Advent Journey - 14th December

Read: Ezra 1 vs 1 vs 1-6 

On Saturday evening we were watching The Grinch. If you know the story you will know the Grinch was the one who set out to steal Christmas. If there is any ‘Grinch-like’ event in the Old Testament it is the exile, when around 600BC many of God’s people were carried off hundreds of miles to Babylon and their city Jerusalem was left in ruins. It’s walls (a symbol of security), and it’s temple (a reminder of God’s presence) were destroyed. Living at this time it seemed that Christmas was a very very long way away. 

A number of Old Testament books tell the story of how the exile began to come to an end and what happened as the people began to return to the Promised Land. Today our Advent reading is in the book of Ezra. Like so many rescue stories in the Bible, Ezra starts in an unpromising place. ‘Cyrus king of Persia’ was on the throne of the new world superpower. He was a pagan king. God’s Word, God’s promises, God’s purposes, none of these things would have meant anything to Cyrus and none of them would have been anywhere on his radar. 

In his first year on the throne (538BC) Cyrus was making some big policy decisions, as new rulers often do. One of those was that he decided to allow a large group of ‘exiles’ to return to the city of Jerusalem, and they were going to be allowed to start rebuilding the temple that had been destroyed years earlier.

Cyrus no doubt had his own reasons for doing what he was doing, as he worked out his own objectives in the complex world of his day. But here’s the thing. The writer of Ezra tells us that in the background, below the surface it was the LORD who ‘move the heart’ of this powerful pagan king to do what he did.

God is moving the story forward, in His way, for His glory. The whole of the Old Testament story keeps moving towards Christmas. No exile, no ruler, no set of events, or crises, personal, local or international can get in the way.

TodayGod is still at work (Romans 8:28). Faith gets up gets on confident in this amazing truth.

Prayer: Father thank you that you at work today, in my life, across our island, among the nations of the world, all for your glory. Amen.