A People Returned (Ezra 1)

As we start 2023, God may be calling you to renew, renovate, or rebuild some aspect of your life. What might that be? It's always a challenge to do renovations or to recover from a disaster. How does God work in people's lives to accomplish His rebuilding purposes?

Today we're looking at Ezra 1, and seeing that God moves in the heart of a king and a people to rebuild the Temple that was destroyed decades earlier. The people whom God moved to go from Babylon to Jerusalem would be returning to a city destroyed and to homes of rubble. Their calling was not to a place of abundance, but to a place of desolation. And from that desolation they were to rebuild a place of God-centred worship.

Sometimes that how God works. He calls us to face our desolation before we can experience wholeness and healing. He calls us to a renovation project that requires facing the reality of our brokenness so that we can learn to trust Him with our hurts and our healing.