Today's passage is Ezra 9:9-15.
Ezra says that though they were slaves, God did not abandon them to slavery because he loved them. He changed the attitude of the kings of Persia towards them and let them rebuild the Temple.
Then Ezra laments their sin of intermarriage, acknowledging that, though they are being punished, it's not nearly what they deserve. He worries that the anger of a just God will destroy even the remnant of them that yet remains. He confesses that they stand guilty before the Lord.
I just finished re-reading CS Lewis's "Screwtape Letters", the story of a young devil who fails to lead a young man away from God and into Hell.
What Screwtape, the teacher devil, warns his apprentice about is the attitude Ezra shows in his prayer and confession because people who have this attitude will never go to Hell.
What is the attitude? Humility before God because of a clear view of their sin and how much they deserve punishment not mercy. It is an attitude of awe before God's unfailing love.
Ezra amazes me with his sense of shared sin.
He didn't marry a Jebusite or give his daughter to an Amorite or let his son marry a Moabite.
Yet he confesses all this, sees himself as a member of a poor remnant sinning still in the midst of the bright and protected moment in history, which enables them to rebuild the Temple.
I fail to feel the guilt and shame of my son's turning away from God for the miasma of "universal spirits" or my mother's stubborn refusal to accept Jesus, just like my wife's mother.
I fail to acknowledge my unity of sin with them.
That's why Ezra's spirit is greater, like Paul's and his anguish for his Jewish brothers and for the new Christians under seige of Satan.
I stand alone and guilty before God deserving a lot more punishment and suffering than the little I've endured.
My suffering is so small beside my sin, the difference between the Eiffel Tower and a souvenir model of it.
The difference between my suffering and my sin is the measure of God's love.
That's what Ezra teaches me today.
My suffering is so much smaller than my sin.
Lord, remind me each day when I complain about some incident or someone's unkind words or my cold or a missed subway train or a thousand other things that my sin's shadow blots out if only I would see it clearly.
Turn my eyes to my sins, Lord, that I may reach for you and live.
