Ezra 9: 8 March 7, 2014

Alfred Shropshire                  

Ezra 9: 8                 

March 7, 2014

Now for a short time, O Lord our God, you have shown grace to us and have let some of us escape from slavery and live in this holy place . . .  and have given us new life.

When King Cyrus of Persia, overthrew Babylon in 539 B. C., he offered Jewish exiles the opportunity to return home.  There was never a mass exodus to return to Jerusalem. Only about 50,000 exiles did return.  They began the task of trying to restore life to what it had been like before their exile to Babylon.

Under the leadership of the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Nehemiah, using the authority granted by Emperor Darius, the Temple was rebuilt and reforms enacted to make the nation what God had intended it to be, a blessing to all nations.

A generation after Nehemiah’s reforms, King Artaxerxes II of Persia gave Ezra permission to return to Jerusalem with a second group of Jews.  Ezra was instructed to  take with him “everything that the God of  Heaven requires for his Temple. . . . [and to] teach the Laws of your God to anyone who does not know it.”

Alas!  All is not well.  Ezra finds that in the short time since Nehemiah instituted his reforms, and Ezra’s return to Jerusalem, things are back to pre-reform status.  The Jews are not  a blessing to other nations. On the contrary, they have continued to intermarry with other peoples and adopt their customs and gods.  Ezra’s prayer of confession expresses his being “too ashamed to raise my head in your presence.  Our sins pile up higher than our heads; they reach as high as the heavens.”

I am thankful for our “Prayer of Confession” each Sunday morning. The printed words always make me aware of why my little light does not shine very bright and has a tendency to flutter in the breeze.  The moment of silence gives me time to reflect on God’s grace and how, even in this brief time, I have been given the opportunity to free myself from whatever enslaves me in this world, and to take on a new life in the days ahead.

Prayer: O Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.  Amen.