the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 2 of 5
Ezra 7:19-28
Ezra has kept the word of God and not denied His name. He and the men who gather in answer to his call are about to be made aware of their own weakness (there are scarcely 1,500 of them) but at the same time they realise that God has set before them "an open door and no man can shut it" (Revelation 3:8). Artaxerxes 1st, like his predecessors Cyrus and Darius, is a prepared instrument of the LORD to keep open before the exiled remnant of Judah the door of return to Jerusalem. With goodwill and generosity, this king has taken all the necessary measures to allow Ezra to undertake his journey and also to attend, on his arrival, to the functioning of the house of the LORD. "The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will" (Proverbs 21:1; see also Proverbs 8:15-16). It is not stated that Ezra thanked Artaxerxes, although he certainly would not fail to do so. Instead he blesses the LORD as the One "who hath put such a thing as this in the king’s heart". Like him let us always strive to see "the hand", indeed "the good hand of God" (vv. 6, 9, 27; Ezra 8:18; Ezra 8:31), in everything which happens to us.
