passage is Ezra 8: 21-36.
In yesterday's passage, Ezra had assembled the exiles who were going back to Jerusalem. For three days he went over the list of people, discovered no Levites had volunteered and sent to other leaders for them.
In today's passage, Ezra orders the exiles, who are still camped beside the Ahava Canal, to fast and pray for a safe trip to Jerusalem because he felt he couldn't ask the king for an armed guard since he'd told the king that God protects those who worship him.
They arrived safely, rested for three days and then turned over all the gold and silver and gold and silver articles they'd brought to the Temple authorities. Then they made sacrifices after which they delivered the king's decree to the non-Jews to support the construction.
Any trip or undertaking requires preparation and then checking the preparations.
The more people that are involved, the more checking you need. It took Ezra three days to discover there were no Levites among the group of exiles returning to Jerusalem, which had to be remedied.
The three days of checking must have frustrated many of those wanting to start.
And then to find they had to wait even longer while they got some Levites must have further frustrated them.
And then when they were all ready and a special group was charged with reponsibility for the wealth of gold and silver they were carrying, they hear Ezra order them to fast and pray to God because there was no armed guard!
What kind of organization was this?
First, they must have wondered if they were ever leaving!
Then some of them must have wondered how much Ezra the priest and teacher knew about caravan safety and security in a land filled with bandits.
What would happen when word got out that they were carrying milions of dollars worth of gold and silver?
And then he calls a fast before they leave! Shouldn't they be preserving their strength for a long, hard journey?
How many of these volunteer returnees thought about changing their minds and staying in Babylon?
However many there were, they all stayed together, they all went, and they all arrived, with the gold and silver, by the grace of God.
When I got married the first time and decided to go back to university to complete my degrees, I was not prepared at all.
Even though we had two children, neither my wife nor I measured the cost.
The result was five years of increasing hardship and suffering, moving to poorer and poorer houses and wearing poorer and poorer clothes.
In the end I wore socks on my hands in the winter because I had no money for gloves.
I sold my blood twice a week to buy groceries.
On weekends, I walked in the ditches collecting bottles and cans for recycling money.
I chopped trees and scrap wood to burn in the fireplace because I had no money to buy oil for the heater.
But by the grace of God I survived.
The Lord brought me to my knees and I experienced a conversion from agnosticism to Christianity.
I called Jesus my Lord and Savior and I pledged my obedience to him.
That began my Christian walk.
The ups and downs of that walk have been many.
I remember the downs much more vividly than the ups because they lasted longer.
Always I have not been prepared.
Always I did not count the cost of my misadventures.
But, like Ezra, I have learned to pray and call upon the Lord because that is the best preparation.
As I prayed more, I actually learned to become better preprared but whenever I thought I was wonderfully prepared and forgot to pray, my caravan was wrecked.
Until now, I never learned to fast.
I did it once in a while, but I developed no habit of fasting. Now I will.
I told my small group members in a prayer today that we should fast once a month. We need the step of fasting to prepare ourselves for our journey to God and support our church communtiy.
Lord, inspire me with your call to pray and fasting to better serve my spiritual community.
