Ole brother Nehemiah!
Now that feller sits somewhere near the top of my human hope chain.
He, project manager for building of the second Jerusalem wall, allowed a seed of the Heavenly Father’s given hope to blossom out of his life, sending forth the fragrance to energize a people to discover “a mind to work.” (Nehemiah 4:6)
The Hebrew captive, cup bearer to King Artaxerxes, evidently welcomed the God of Israel to infect his own mind, even beginning with the sad news of the broken walls of his beloved Jerusalem. I hear the rattling of his gray matter as this bold and respected man of the Persian court rode mile after mile wondering and awaiting, envisioning and daring to plan his own response upon arrival in David’s city. Hope, at that point, really lay in the long yet beyond of Nehemiah. He would hope, but not yet. The reality news, the bold risk request of the King, and the long hard trip had to be traveled to precede the coming of his own hope. Yet he chose not to abandon his own pursuit of hope.
Once inside the city, he traveled beyond his own gained and apparent surface reality to experience the metropolitan brokenness beyond anyone else’s grasp and see only for himself the devastation and magnitude of the tragedy.
Nehemiah’s solitary nighttime dangerous donkey ride connected him to the depth of the seemingly impossible task. He, inside Jerusalem, seeing, touching, smelling, listening, even tasting the rotten, rusting, sickening lost grandeur now a garbage ruin, exposed his emotions to receive horrors beyond his own fears. Only now God seemed to open hope, and the award went to the first person to accept the real Jerusalem in ruins. Hope rises up in Nehemiah only after his own personal experience of the reality of the present city. He now knew his role in a new calling.
God’s gift of hope comes in response to personal reality check and acceptance. In the midst of these loss times, dare you, I, or anyone expect to be given His hope to bypass or precede our authentic embracing of the situation, even at the prize of displacing fantasy for real pain?
In essence, on your way to hope, allow the Heavenly Father to immerse you totally within your own reality.
The current times as is must become the times as is for you.
