After working my way thru Isaiah over a period of a few months I decided the I’d keep rolling and got stuck into Jeremiah, then Lamentations, Daniel and finally I launched into Ezekiel – possibly the hardest of them all to read and engage with.
I was in that headspace of reading the chapters towards the end that describe in elaborate detail how the temple was to be constructed – and to be fair I was getting very bored…
Here’s a taster straight from Ch 41:
Then the man brought me to the main hall and measured the jambs; the width of the jambs was six cubits[a] on each side.[b] 2 The entrance was ten cubits[c] wide, and the projecting walls on each side of it were five cubits[d] wide. He also measured the main hall; it was forty cubits long and twenty cubits wide.[e]
3 Then he went into the inner sanctuary and measured the jambs of the entrance; each was two cubits[f] wide. The entrance was six cubits wide, and the projecting walls on each side of it were seven cubits[g] wide. 4 And he measured the length of the inner sanctuary; it was twenty cubits, and its width was twenty cubits across the end of the main hall. He said to me, “This is the Most Holy Place.”
I have been in the practice of reading scripture and praying in the mornings, but this section was lolling me off to sleep. I don’t think I actually ‘read’ any of it – I just internally said ‘detail… detail… detail…’
And I did I realised the point is that God actually cares about detail – cares enough to be highly prescriptive with the place he would consider his dwelling place. I dunno if you’d call it pedantic – but it certainly isn’t a case of ‘knock up a donger and we’ll leave it at that!’
I’m not fantastic with details – I got a parking fine recently because I read the sign too quickly and missed the time when parking was free. I missed a signature on an important form because I skimmed it and rushed it in.
I think in blocks and chunks, but often miss detail and the fact is that detail matters. That was all I heard that morning as I read what I would consider a fairly tedious and uninspiring section of the Bible.
God cares about details – maybe I should care a little more.
Church Leadership Meeting
“Last Sunday, we had xxx adults in the morning service, xxx adults in the late service. xxx children in the youth program. We had xxx visitor cards filled out, xxx new member applications. xxx people in small groups. xxx people in our out-in-the-park ministry.
The collection was xxx dollars. xx was in cash. xxx use envelopes. xxx have taken advantage of online giving. The budget is xxx and we are xx% ahead(behind) for the year. Our mortgage is down to xxx and we are making advance payments of xxx. We spent xxx on sealing the parking lot, xxx on new tables for the ministry center, xxx on supplies for the nursery.
We have sent out xxx cards to push the fall kickoff on xx/xx/xx and have xx team leaders–need xx more center-helpers and xx guides and parking attendants. We….”
And you wonder why leaders get burnt out….in service of God (?)
Some guys ‘love’ the fine detail of stuff while others are big-picture people, some are reactive, some depressive. I’m inclined to think people wrote ‘their’ bits of the bible out of their own characters, though one might debate whether God chose them because that character suited His ends or whether they just did it their way because that was what they knew.
Perhaps Ezekiel was just a precise-detail guy, and this was him doing his best to get it right.