One Year On

It was exactly one year ago today that I was fired from my job, along with 8 others, in the first round of several layoffs. If you had told me then all that we would be going through together as a family, and what still lies ahead of us after a year for that matter, I think I would have just wanted to end it all then. But day-by-day, step-by-step, we have pressed on and made it through!

I remember a line from a Tom Clancy novel (I don’t remember which one): “Averages are made up of highs and lows.” These low times are just part of averaging everything out.

I’d like to hope things will turn around soon, but after 365 days, “soon” has become harder to define. I know that we will be okay. No… better than okay.

Recently, in my Bible reading time I find myself drawn to reading about the Exile period in Israel’s history. It’s become so personal to me as I have read the different accounts. I have imagined what it was like for those who were dragged off to Babylon, and I have wondered about those who were left to stay. Neither group of people “had it made”. Both faced their own desolations, just of different sorts.

For 47 years, neither group saw the other.

For 47 years, each either longed for the blessed City of Jerusalem (City of Peace) or lived among its ruins.

For 47 years, God was silent.

In the 48th year, Ezra was given permission by Artaxerxes, the Babylonian king, to return to Jerusalem and begin the restoration of the city. Ezra writes about the journey back: “I assembled the exiles at the Ahava (Hebrew for “love”) Canal, and we camped there for three days while I went over the lists of the people and the priests who had arrived. I found that not one Levite had volunteered to come along.” (Ezra 8: 15).

It’s easy to miss the significance of this because, in the previous 14 verses, he just got done listing all of the people who returned with him. You’re beginning to nod off. But then that simple, arresting sentence.

The Levites were the tribe and people responsible for the service of the Tabernacle and of the Temple. This was the chance for the rebuilding of the Temple – sanctioned by the king, no less – yet not one Levite had chosen to go back. Ezra had to go find some.

What must have happened in the lives of all of these men over those 48 years to drive out this God-given historical duty, down to the man, from their lives? It causes such imaginations in me.

It is said that “God uses your misery to become your ministry”. This is not a ministry I would have chosen for us, but I pray that we will be faithful. I also pray it doesn’t take 47 more years.

We have been encouraged and supported by so many people, in so many ways, over the past 365 days. Some of it we know about. Some of it we can only feel.

We are a blessed people.

It’s been an amazing year.

 

“We left the Love Canal to travel to the City of Peace. God was with us all the way, and kept us safe, and we arrived ….”
Ezra 8: 31-32

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