Wildfires, Hurricanes, and Ezekiel’s Unheeded Warning

Maybe they were ultimately able to forgive you and maybe not. But if they did, it was an act of pure grace. And yet, the relational tear of our sin against one another and against God is even bigger than this. It seems even more hopeless and frayed and shredded. How can it possible be mended? Why would God even want to mend it? And yet, the passage tells us that God wants to mend it. God has no desire to judge us. As Luther said, judgment is his alien work. It is sometimes necessary, but his natural work is redemptive. As the passage goes on beyond our reading today into the wider context, God tells Ezekiel that what counts is right now. How are we responding to God right now? We are not on the one hand to despair of our past sins; when we turn to God, he can begin the mending right now. On the other hand, we are not to rest on our past laurels; past acts of faithfulness don’t matter so much as our willingness to be faithful to the Lord now.

Paul writes in Romans 13:11, “The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” This too is a word to believers. As believers we daily need to turn from our sin and to Christ, to experience his transforming work on our hearts. We daily need to awake from our sleep. The call to be a Christian is not one of comfort and rest and retirement and ease. It is empowered by the work of God, not our own, but we are even so responsible to respond to the voice of God, to the revealed truth in his Word and through the proclamation of fellow believers.

We are responsible to share the truth that we know with other believers, to call them from sin and to God again. We are not responsible for their reactions. And we have the hope that when we turn to the Lord, he is waiting with open arms to forgive us and live his love through us anew.

Thanks be to God.

photo credit: beltz6 Whittier Fire, evening of July 13, 2017 via photopin (license)