Today's passage is Ezra 1:1-11.
In fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy, Cyrus orders the temple in Jerusalem to be rebuilt. The family heads in Judah and Benjamin have their hearts moved by God to go to Jerusalem.
Their neighbors assist them with goods. Cyrus gives them all the things taken from the temple when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Israel. The exiles are returning from exile in Babylon.
After 70 years in Babylon the exiles are ordered home to Jerusalem.
The problem, of course, is that Babylon is home to most of them.
Babylon is their environment, where most were born and grew up.
Jerusalem is the foreign place.
The Jews are ordered by God through Cyrus to leave a rich land, go to a poor one and restore a broken temple.
Sometimes Korea seems like Babylon to me.
Korea is a foreign place but it's my home.
I have a comfortable life here although it wasn't always so.
Korea is also like Jerusalem for me because I'm one of the many builders of our church with my money, my work and my spirit.
God sent me here and he's kept me here to train and grow.
I praise God that it is still hard because he's made the rest of my life rather soft in comparison to what I lived with for most of my life.
I look at the lives of my small group members who also are returning from exile and, like David, build the church in their hearts, signing up for 1 to 1 training, opening their lives more in mokjang, seeing the sin in their lives, willing to meet more of our church members, taking a risk on relationships that God controls instead of them.
It's hard being an exile and returning.
It's hard trusting God when life collapses and then, after it's built again, told to leave it because there's a renewal, a resurrection he wants us to be part of.
I have to go with a heart moved by God and trust him to provide for me, maybe through others as in verse 4 or restitution of what was taken away as in verses 7 to 11.
The key is obedience to God's word as in verse 1. Disobedience is the problem.
I'm dealing with a complicated issue of disobedience in my school. The boy I expelled but brought back in repentance is struggling with obeying a few simple rules on how to dress and how to obey his teachers.
He's had a long history of anger and rebellion. His attitude has changed from pessimism to optimism, but he still has the habit of disobedience that neither he nor his parents clearly understand.
They have become my trainers as I return from my own exile of anger and blindness to my circumstances.
I pray, Lord, that you give me your love and compassion on this boy and his parents so that we may all be healed and glorify your name.
