When God sent his people to Babylon in exile he spoke to the prophet Ezekiel:
…son of man, pack your bags to prepare yourself for exile and go into exile (galah) … Ezekiel 12:3
The Hebrew word for “go into exile” is “galah”. It also means to “expose, lay bare, uncover, reveal, be stripped.”
Here’s another verse using “galah” but the word is translated “laid bare:”
I will tear down the wall you have covered with whitewash and will level it to the ground so that its foundation will be laid bare (galah). Ezekiel 13:14
So exile isn’t just a physical experience. Exile is a metaphor for what God wants to do in his people. He uses exile to expose our true heart. He lays us bare, very much like this verse relates: he tears down everything false in us to expose our foundation. I do not believe the goal is to shame us. God wants to purify us by bringing the impurities to the surface and removing them.
Exile reveals our dark side. (It can also reveal our good side). Exile brings confession to the forefront of our heart. The experience of exile has the unique ability to reveal things hidden deep within us that can’t be found in good times. In order to move on from exile we need to embrace the experience and let it do its full work. The more we resist it the longer we stay in exile.
Have you ever noticed how our culture avoids exile at any cost? Prayer, fasting, and alms giving has been reduced to more manageable inconveniences like giving up meat on Fridays or giving up dessert after a full meal. God wants more than that: if He must draw us into exile to capture our undivided heart He will.
What do you fear that true exile will reveal in your heart? Are you willing to take the risk, the journey?
Back on Ash Wednesday the question was: What images or concepts do you wrestle with? Actually, at night, before dropping off to sleep, and I begin with "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost", my mind is groping for an "image" of these three "Persons". What is a "Spirit" like? Writing in "The Shack", that author presented a fascinating depiction of the three "Persons". I have to say, when the Son of God appears again, I do not expect Him to look like any of the artists have pictured Him. What I believe is that He appeared to a certain people at a certain time in a certain place, and when He appears again it will of course be a different time and among different people and probably in a different "place". What we have is the Gospel according to John, third chapter, where Jesus is telling Nicodemus, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from, or where it goes." God is like that. In a hospital corridor some years ago, I "heard" the "sound" of God's "voice" telling me, "You have been angry long enough!" It was not an admonition of my own origination, because I was not even aware that I was angry. Five years earlier, at the death of my daughter I had been angry as part of the grief process, angry because being on the Prayer List at church had not helped, angry at the medical establishment, and more, but had gotten over that anger long ago, I would have said. But God knew better. Now I was faced with the grave illness of my husband. And God was telling me I had been angry long enough. Because of that experience, I knew then that God was with me. ...But it is still hard to pray to a "Spirit", to the "wind".
ReplyDeleteYes, it is hard to accept that we cannot grasp or control God. I like the story of his showing his backside to Moses. That is about all we can glimpse in this life. I do think we "hear" God more often than we "see" God. This is the hope of Lent: that we can quiet ourselves and our lives to hear God speaking to us in our anger, disappointment, heart brokenness, etc.
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