Scripture: Ezekiel 1:1–3, 28 (NRSVUE)
Key Verse: “The word of the Lord came to the priest Ezekiel son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the River Chebar, and the hand of the Lord was on him there.” (Ezekiel 1:3)
Reflection:
Ezekiel’s book opens with an address. He is in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar, among the exiles, in the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity. The details are precise because the location is the point. A priest who expected to meet God in the Temple sees the heavens opened beside an irrigation canal in enemy territory, and the verse closes on a word that would have staggered its first readers: the hand of the Lord was on him there.
There, five years into a captivity with no end in sight. Ezekiel does not recognize God’s presence because his circumstances improved. He recognizes it in circumstances he never would have chosen, and the vision puts him on his face. That kind of recognition overturns the assumption that God is found where we last found God. Congregations carry that assumption quietly. We look for God in the sanctuary at eleven o’clock and treat the hospital room, the unemployment office, and the shuttered church down the road as places God has left.
Many of us received a Star Word in January. The year has since changed shape. Some of us have buried people. Some have lost work, or health, or a relationship we thought would last. Some are living with circumstances we never imagined when we first held that word in our hands. It is tempting to treat the word as a goal the year was supposed to help us reach, and to set it aside when the year went somewhere else.
Ezekiel’s vision suggests another way to hold it. Carry your word into the place you did not want to be this year and consider what it might mean there. If your word is peace, what does peace look like in a hospital waiting room? If your word is courage, what might courage mean when the future is uncertain? If your word is hope, what does hope become when the thing you hoped for is gone?
And sometimes you will look and find nothing. No peace in the waiting room. No courage for the conversation. No sign that the word you received in January has anything to say about the life you are living in November. That does not mean God has abandoned you. Ezekiel’s vision begins with God reaching him, before he had gone looking.
The hand of the Lord was on him there. Before Ezekiel knew what to make of his circumstances, before he could imagine what would come next, God was already present. Perhaps that is what our Star Words have been inviting us to practice all along. Not how to make the year turn out the way we wanted, but how to remain open to the God who meets us in the year we actually lived.
Writing Prompt: Where were you this year when you least expected to meet God? Write what your Star Word looks like from that place, even if the honest answer is that you could not find it there.
Application: Before Sunday, tell someone you trust about one place this year where life did not go the way you hoped. Tell them your Star Word and what it does or does not say to you there. You do not have to find a lesson or a reason for what happened. Ask them simply to listen.
Prayer: God beside the canal, I keep looking for you where I last found you. Put your hand on me in the places I did not choose. Let the word I have carried this year become a way of seeing you there. Amen.