When old news becomes news again… (Nehemiah 1:1-4)
Not all days are the same. Sometimes they fly by without any particular happenings to make them stand out or make them memorable. However on the contrary, all of us remember certain days with great clarity because those days changed the course of history or our own journey.
Nehemiah was part of a generation of God’s people who grew up in exile in Babylon, they didn’t live in the Promised Land, the land that was so central to their identity and history, but rather lived in a foreign land that was effectively ‘home away from home’.
Nehemiah and those like him had heard the old stories of the tragic sacking and burning of Jerusalem, it’s walls, it’s buildings including the temple of God. They knew the history. Some Jewish people, a remnant had remained in the land around Jerusalem but life was hard the city destroyed.
But one day when Nehemiah heard the news that he knew already, when he considered the facts that; “The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire” (Jeremiah 1:4) Jeremiah is suddenly moved!
Tomorrow we will see what he did with that moment but for today I want you to pause and to think about things in your life, in your church, your neighbourhood, your community that you know about and yet they don’t affect you…
So, ask God, invite God to speak to you about people, situations, injustice, abuse, unemployment, health and education issues and ask God to touch your heart like God touched Nehemiah’s heart suddenly – so that old news came alive and touched his heart and mobilised him into action.
Two words that matter 