RETREAT IN LENT 2021
Day 39,
Saturday, 27 March
Gathering what is scattered
It is Ezekiel’s turn to give a dream of the future (37:21-28).
God will ‘gather’ his people and they will become one nation and will live in
peace. The starting point is the divided kingdom of Israel but the vision goes
far beyond that. The high priest Caiaphas now, unknowingly, makes a prophecy;
Jesus would ‘die for the nation and not for the nation only but to gather
together in unity all the scattered children of God (John 11:45-57).
We are moving closer to a fuller understanding of what God is
planning and what ‘Thy Kingdom come!’ might mean. God is creating unity. Today’s
media and our past history is littered with attempts to create unity among
people, to ‘gather’ what is scattered. The United Nations. I can think of my
country of origin, Ireland, which is crawling painfully over decades towards
unity. We can think of Germany, once divided, now united. We can think of
Zambia: one Zambia, one Nation. Zimbabwe and so on.
We can think of families and the struggle to reconcile
estranged relatives. We can think of our laws, how they try to bring people to
harmony and so on. We are all caught up in a world moving together, ‘gathering’
and God is in the midst of it struggling with us. His death is a death to the
old divided world. His rising is a sign of the gathering of all nations.
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