the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
Ezekiel 10:18—The glory of the Lord went forth from over the threshold, and stood over the cherubim.
The gradual withdrawal of God from his house is described in vivid and awful minuteness. In Ezekiel 9:3, it had gone to the threshold; Ezekiel 10:4, it had mounted up; Ezekiel 10:15, the cherubim mounted up; Ezekiel 11:23, it passes from the city. It is well worth our while to ponder this deep and searching lesson. The light of other days fades but slowly: the year sinks by almost insensible gradations to the fall of the leaf; grey hairs besprinkle our heads without our knowing it; before ever we are aware of it, the train has borne us miles off the main line to the wrong station. So gradually our hearts may backslide. Satan is too knowing to lead us at a single leap into the precipice, but conducts us by a gradual incline. A little less Bible reading; a slight slackening in watchfulness and prayer; an imperceptible drift worldwards.
But turn to Ezekiel 43:2-4. The glory of the Lord returned to the renovated temple. Like the dawn of a new day; like the sound of many waters, it came, it came. "This," God said, "is the place of my throne;... and the house of Israel shall no more defile." Ah, backslider, God will come back to thee again. Thy repentance my be most inadequate; but if it be genuine, if thou dost truly turn to Him from thy sin, thy heart shall again become irradiate with his most blessed of holy light.
Without forcing, these words are also applicable to that coming for which we wait and long; when He who ascended shall descend again to be in us and with us for ever:—
"Hark! What a sound, and too divine for hearing,
Stirs on the earth and trembles in the air!
It is the thunder of the Lord’s appearing!
It is the music of his peoples’ prayer!"
