Catching Fog

Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD:

“You were the seal of perfection,
Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God;
Every precious stone was your covering:
The sardius, topaz, and diamond,
Beryl, onyx, and jasper,
Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold.
The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes
Was prepared for you on the day you were created.
“You were the anointed cherub who covers;
I established you;
You were on the holy mountain of God;
You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.
You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created,
Till iniquity was found in you.
“By the abundance of your trading
You became filled with violence within,
And you sinned;
Therefore I cast you as a profane thing
Out of the mountain of God;
And I destroyed you, O covering cherub,
From the midst of the fiery stones.
“Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty;
You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor;
I cast you to the ground,
I laid you before kings,
That they might gaze at you.
“You defiled your sanctuaries
By the multitude of your iniquities,
By the iniquity of your trading;
Therefore I brought fire from your midst;
It devoured you,
And I turned you to ashes upon the earth
In the sight of all who saw you. (Ezekiel 28:11-18)

We are neither the masters of our fates nor the captains of our souls. Sometimes, like the King of Tyre, we forget that. Tyre was a prosperous city whose wealth came from its extensive trade. God compared its king to the first human in paradise and described his destruction in language similar to Adam’s expulsion from Eden. Like Adam, the king of Tyre had it all. But like Adam, he would lose it all. First the Babylonians would repeatedly sack Tyre, and then Alexander the Great would destroy it.

The king of Tyre was called a cherub because, as the anointed king of the city, he guarded it. Cherubs were a kind of angel, usually pictured as a winged lion, like the images that flanked the thrones of Assyrian kings. Like most Middle Eastern despots of the time, the king of Tyre believed himself to be a god. But thanks to the fact that human beings, even kings, are mortal—God easily put him in his place.

No matter how much control we may think we have of our lives, no matter how well off we may be, our lives and our fortunes are in God’s hands, not ours.

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The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears. Groan quietly; do not mourn for the dead. Keep your turban fastened and your sandals on your feet; do not cover the lower part of your face or eat the customary food of mourners.”

So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. The next morning I did as I had been commanded.

Then the people asked me, “Won’t you tell us what these things have to do with us?”

So I said to them, “The word of the Lord came to me: Say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am about to desecrate my sanctuary—the stronghold in which you take pride, the delight of your eyes, the object of your affection. The sons and daughters you left behind will fall by the sword. And you will do as I have done. You will not cover the lower part of your face or eat the customary food of mourners.’” (Ezekiel 24:15-22)

What if you weren’t allowed to cry? Ezekiel was taken into Babylonian captivity a few years before the Babylonians had burned Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. Ezekiel prophesied to Israelites who had been carried off around the same time. God often had him act out his prophetic messages. For instance, Ezekiel once went outside, put a brick down in the dirt, and laid siege to it as a child might play with toy soldiers. It illustrated what Babylon was going to do to Jerusalem. This time, the illustration of God’s message was personally devastating for Ezekiel. God told him his beloved wife would die. Worse, he wouldn’t even be permitted the normal Jewish mourning rituals: no torn garments, no outward weeping.

What Ezekiel was asked to do was something strange. It served to illustrate the nature of the coming disaster: when Jerusalem fell, the people of Israel would feel sorrow, but they would not have the opportunity to express it. God wanted them to recognize the sheer horror of what was to come.

Keeping his sorrow bottled up inside was a nearly unbearable burden for Ezekiel.

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The word that Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah, when he had written these words in a book at the instruction of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to you, O Baruch: ‘You said, “Woe is me now! For the Lord has added grief to my sorrow. I fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest.” ’

“Thus you shall say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Behold, what I have built I will break down, and what I have planted I will pluck up, that is, this whole land. And do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them; for behold, I will bring adversity on all flesh,” says the Lord. “But I will give your life to you as a prize in all places, wherever you go.”’” (Jeremiah 45:1-5)

Losing perspective is very easy. Baruch, the man who had served as Jeremiah’s secretary for years, writing down the words that he received from God, was overcome by his own suffering and fell into despair. God told him to get over it. In the first place, it wasn’t all about him. In the second place, God promised to protect him and keep him alive, no matter where he went, no matter what he had to face.
When everything goes wrong, it is hard to avoid Baruch’s attitude. All we want then is for the pain to go away. When we face financial ruin, when someone close to us dies, when we become seriously ill, the only thing that can make us feel good, the only thing we care to hear, is that we have money, that our loved one is not really dead, or that there is a miracle cure that will make us all better.

God told Baruch not to seek great things for himself. Instead, he should be satisfied to simply be alive. Bad things happen in life and if you’re going to be alive, you’re going to experience some bad things. That’s how it works. The question Baruch had to answer for himself, and that we need to answer for ourselves, is simply this: isn’t a life with God enough?

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This is what the LORD says:
I will answer your prayers
because I have set a time
when I will help
by coming to save you.
I have chosen you
to take my promise of hope
to other nations.
You will rebuild the country
from its ruins,
then people will come
and settle there.
You will set prisoners free
from dark dungeons
to see the light of day.
On their way home,
they will find plenty to eat,
even on barren hills.
They won’t go hungry
or get thirsty;
they won’t be bothered
by the scorching sun
or hot desert winds.
I will be merciful
while leading them along
to streams of water.
I will level the mountains
and make roads.
Then my people will return
from distant lands
in the north and the west
and from the city of Syene. (Isaiah 49:8-12)

[insight]
There is no doubt that God will answer our prayers. But God has his own time and way of doing it. Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians. Seventy years of captivity followed. People prayed for deliverance, just as their ancestors had prayed for deliverance from the Egyptians—for four hundred long years. Sometimes there is a gap between when a prayer is offered and when it is answered.

We pray for healing, we pray that those we love will be restored, that they will be protected, that they will not die or hurt. When our loved ones die, when they don’t come home from war, when the bank forecloses, when the job is lost, when whatever we fear most comes upon us, we may think that God has forsaken us, that he didn’t hear our prayer.

But God has a time and way of answering that is nothing like we expect. We live such short lives and see so little of the overall plan of God. There is more to eternity than the seventy years of a human lifespan. God has all the time in the world—all the time in eternity—to answer your prayer. Your loved ones will be resurrected, and you’ll walk on streets of gold. God has prepared rooms in his mansion just for you. All your dreams will come true. We just need to broaden our perspective—and widen our expectations. We expect too little of God. God’s answers are not limited to a window of merely seventy years.

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When the poor and needy
are dying of thirst
and cannot find water,
I, the LORD God of Israel,
will come to their rescue.
I won’t forget them.
I will make rivers flow
on mountain peaks.
I will send streams
to fill the valleys.
Dry and barren land
will flow with springs
and become a lake.
I will fill the desert
with all kinds of trees—
cedars, acacias, and myrtles;
olive and cypress trees;
fir trees and pines.
Everyone will see this
and know that I,
the holy LORD God of Israel,
created it all. (Isaiah 41:17-20)

God will take care of us. The Israelites had been taken captive by their enemies and it was not for no reason. God had warned them of the coming calamity and made it clear to them that they were being punished, much as a parent would give his child the rules, warn him of impending punishment, and then carry it out. But, like a parent, God did not disown his child; God did not punish in order to ruin their lives. Rather, God had the best of intentions and reassured his people that he would still provide for their needs. They need not fear that they would dry up and blow away.

Certainly, while the nation was in captivity and oppressed, the fields were left fallow and those places that needed irrigation were left unwatered. But that changed when the people returned. The barren places bloomed once again, the water flowed, and everyone had plenty to eat and drink. God will always provide for his people. He will never abandon them. Punishment does not mean our destruction, ever.

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In the year that the supreme commander, sent by Sargon king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and attacked and captured it— at that time the LORD spoke through Isaiah son of Amoz. He said to him, “Take off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet.” And he did so, going around stripped and barefoot.

Then the LORD said, “Just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush, so the king of Assyria will lead away stripped and barefoot the Egyptian captives and Cushite exiles, young and old, with buttocks bared—to Egypt’s shame. Those who trusted in Cush and boasted in Egypt will be afraid and put to shame. In that day the people who live on this coast will say, ‘See what has happened to those we relied on, those we fled to for help and deliverance from the king of Assyria! How then can we escape?’ ” (Isaiah 20:1-6)

Being a prophet is not the glamorous job a lot of people imagine it to be. Sure, it might be nice to have a direct line to God, but on the downside, he doesn’t always call at convenient times. And what he wants you to say is rarely going to be popular or win friends. Certainly you won’t get rich off it; in fact, it is unlikely to be beneficial to your life at all if you’re thinking only in terms of being comfortable.

Israel relied on Egypt to protect them from Assyria. God wanted to show Israel that this was a mistake: Egypt wouldn’t even be able to protect itself from the Assyrians, let alone do anything to help Israel. Trusting in everything and everyone but God would prove embarrassing. The Egyptians would see exile, and those who witnessed it would see more than they bargained for.

God recognized that giving speeches was not the only way to communicate. There was also storytelling, acting, and art. So Isaiah got to be a living parable to illustrate the message God wanted to get across. God was good at communicating and he knew how to get an audience’s attention. Having Isaiah run around without clothes certainly got people’s attention—especially since he did it for three years. Why so long? Perhaps, like any other message, even a naked prophet tended to get ignored. We don’t always like to listen to God, no matter how well he tells the story.

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“But no, my people wouldn’t listen.
Israel did not want me around.
So I let them follow their own stubborn desires,
living according to their own ideas.
Oh, that my people would listen to me!
Oh, that Israel would follow me, walking in my paths!
How quickly I would then subdue their enemies!
How soon my hands would be upon their foes!
Those who hate the LORD would cringe before him;
they would be doomed forever.
But I would feed you with the finest wheat.
I would satisfy you with wild honey from the rock.” (Psalm 81:11-16)

Sometimes when you can’t get something to work, it’s because you chose to ignore the instructions. Like the child who tells his father when he tries to help that “I can do it myself” just before he or she makes a mess of things, so in life it is all too easy to decide we don’t need to pay attention to what God told us. Our circumstances are different, this is special, we know better, times are different now; the excuses are endless and always the same. As are the results.

God hadn’t been silent; he’d sent his prophets to the Israelites. Before that, he had sent Moses who gave them a contract and laid out quite clearly and precisely what God expected. It wasn’t complicated: love God, love people. But people had better ideas, they thought, of what was best for their lives, what would bring them real happiness in contrast to what they imagined God was going to give them. So God sat back and let them have their way, knowing that sooner or later they would recognize their mistake and come back to him. And he’d be there waiting. He made us free to do as we please. But he knows that sooner or later we’ll decide to do as he pleases. God is patient and can out-wait anyone.

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