Brokenness

📖 Ezra 10

Well, we've made it to the end of Ezra, but we're nowhere near done building. Tomorrow we move into Nehemiah, but before we do, I can't get past the picture Ezra 10 gives us of Ezra on the ground praying, confessing and weeping before God.

   While he's there, people start gathering around him. Men, women and children come, and before long they're weeping too. That's the part that really got me this morning. Ezra didn't stand over the people telling them they needed to be broken. He was broken. He didn't point at them and tell them to repent while keeping himself separate from the mess. He got down on his knees and cried out to God, and his brokenness drew other people into brokenness too. Did you catch that? His brokenness drew others to be broken as he was.

   I think sometimes we work so hard trying to convince people they need to change. We want them to see what we see, understand what they're doing wrong, get serious about God, repent, do better. But Ezra makes me wonder if people don't always need someone standing over them telling them to get on their knees. Maybe they need to see someone already there.

   That's the kind of leader I want to be. I don't want to get so good at seeing what God needs to change in everybody else that I stop letting Him deal with me. I want my own walk with Him to be real enough that if God breaks my heart, I'm willing to let people see me broken. If He corrects me, I want to be willing to say He corrected me. If He's rebuilding something in me, I don't need to pretend I'm already finished just because I'm helping somebody else build.

   And then right in the middle of all those tears comes this little sentence that I absolutely love

“Yet now there is hope.”

                               That's Ezra.

   There is weeping, but there is hope. There is repentance, but there is hope. There are consequences and a mess that isn't going to be cleaned up overnight, but there is still hope.

   Yesterday we talked about not bringing Babylon home with us, and today they actually have to deal with what they brought back. That's the part of rebuilding that isn't pretty. It's one thing for God to show me what doesn't belong anymore. It's another thing for me to actually let it go.

       But I'm realizing that's rebuilding too.

   Sometimes rebuilding looks like picking up the hammer and getting back to work. Sometimes it looks like celebrating a foundation. Sometimes it looks like trusting God while the enemy is coming from every direction. And sometimes rebuilding looks like sitting on the ground before God and letting Him deal with something in me that I would much rather leave alone.

The Temple is finished by the time we get here, but God is still rebuilding His people.

   And after this week, I think that's what Ezra has been about all along. I started out looking at the rubble and the Temple and all the things God was rebuilding around them. Somewhere along the way, He turned it around and reminded me that the builder is part of the building project too.

    I'm not finished.

None of us are.

     And that's why I love that Ezra doesn't end with everything wrapped up perfectly. There is still work happening in the people, and when we turn the page tomorrow into Nehemiah, we're going to discover there are still broken walls and burned gates outside too.The Temple has been rebuilt, but the building isn't finished.

                       And Neither are we.

So I think the way we should finish Ezra isn't with a hammer in our hands at all. Let's finish it with Ezra on his knees reminding us that real rebuilding has to happen there too. And maybe instead of spending so much energy pointing out where everyone else needs God, I need to be willing to be the first one down there.

    Because who knows who might join us...

One broken heart can draw another broken heart toward God, and right there in the middle of the weeping, the mess, the repentance and the rebuilding there is still hope.

Ezra is finished but God isn't.

And tomorrow, we start building the walls.

Love Pastor Mandy 

Daily reading Ezra 10

MandiesDandies / Ark of Hope 

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