Ezekiel 6:13
“‘They’ll realize that I am GOD when they see their people’s corpses strewn over and around all their ruined sex-and-religion shrines on the bare hills and in the lush fertility groves, in all the places where they indulged their sensual rites.’”
“‘They will know that I am the Lord when their dead lie scattered among their idols and altars on every hill and mountain and under every green tree and every great shade tree– the places where they offered sacrifices to their idols.’”
Focus on sexual sin was a sign Israel had grown self-indulgent, self-focused. They used sex to fill the God shaped hole within them. It didn’t and in their hunger, they turned to more unfulfilling sex. People often go astray when cultural success brings ease to living and time for self-expression. In the search for something new, the old is tossed, replacements sought, and the anchors that built a civilization erode.
We Americans, well fed and protected from catastrophic violence, walk this path today. Survival assured, we place too much importance on other forms of expression, heaping them with emotional weight they cannot bear. Sexual expression, race, political alliance, nationalism, and other isms fill our heads and God Almighty is pushed out of view. Emotions run rampant making compromise, essential to our democratic process, impossible. The old has been thrown into the trash. We are ripe for judgement.
Lord, this world seems so rotten. But I believe you can repair and redeem it if we turn to you and ask. May your Spirit work powerfully for renewal and regeneration in our land. Give us strength to endure judgement and benefit by it. Empower believers to shine with your character and serve with your love through any trial. Shape and prepare me for the future, whatever it holds. Make me ready.