We weren’t sure we were ready, but we went ahead anyway. The adoption attorney we’d worked with to adopt Josie Love had another birthmother interested in us who’d picked us out of a file of prospective parents. She was eager to meet us, so we went.

She was giddy from the get go—so sure of us, so ready for us to say yes. We didn’t have the heart to tell her we weren’t completely sure yet. But by the time the interview was over, we wanted to take him, if only to live up to her love of us.

After all, she was the one who’d done all the work. She’d carried him for eight months. She’d fought toxemia and unemployment and poverty to give him life. She so very badly wanted our family to have him.

What else could we say but yes?

This is something of what the passages today get at.

Ezekiel 35-36

God’s not having it. What they’ve done to his people, they’ve done to him, and payback is a ditch, “massacred bodies will cover your hills and fill up your valleys and ditches.” He’s seen all that Edom, Israel’s neighbor, has done to his people and heard everything they’ve said against him. God will give them “the same treatment” and “every square inch of Edom” will be demolished, Ez 35:8, 12-15.

What’s more, Mount Seir in Edom will be made into “a pile of rubble,” because they “viciously attacked” Israel after they were defeated by Babylon. Then Edom moved in and took over their land and “danced in the streets” to celebrate, Ez 35:1-5, 10, 15; 36:5, MSG.

My takeaway is what you’d guess: God defends his chosen people; God avenges them on their enemies. But here’s the thing I didn’t expect: God does it so that even Edom will know him. God offers his enemies relationship with himself, despite who they are, despite what they’ve done to him. He doesn’t punish them to wipe them off the face of the earth; he does it so “…they will know that I am the Lord,” Ez 35:15 NIV.

Will God never get over this persistent saving-thing he’s into?

Chapter 36 comes along with an entirely different prophecy for the mountains of Israel, the same mountains he’s just emptied because of their atrocities against him. Now would be a good time to remind them of the wickedness he’s had Babylon take them captive for. But what God wants to talk about next is how he’ll restore them.

Unlike Edom’s mountain-turned-rubble, Israel’s mountains “will burst with new growth,” because God’s people will come back. God will be with them, not against them, and he’ll see to it “that the towns fill up with people, that the ruins be rebuilt.” He’ll bless them more than he ever has before, Ez 35:8-12.

God hasn’t forgotten their sin against him. He reminds them how they polluted their land with idol worship, and how he punished them by scattering them in other nations, Ez. 36:16-19.

Surely they suffered. God’s suffered, too. They were such awful ambassadors for him wherever they went that they blackened his reputation; they tarnished his good name. He says for the sake of his holiness, and not for their sakes, he’s going to do something about it. I’m guessing it’s something awful, like bringing snakes in or a plague that takes them out, Ez 36:20-23.

But no, God says he’ll change them so they can love and obey him. He’s going to give them new hearts, “I’ll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that’s God-willed, not self-willed.” What’s more, he’ll give them power to actually do what he says, “I’ll put my Spirit in you and make it possible…to live by my commands,” Ez 35:26-27 MSG.

God doesn’t punish them? He doesn’t tell them to “straighten up and fly right”? He doesn’t buy them bootstraps? Nope. After thousands of years suffering their rebellions, he’s not dreamy-eyed, expecting anybody to “just do it” and turn to him. He’s been down that road enough times: it always dead-ends. Nobody turns to God unless God turns to them first, Ro 3:11; Ps 14:2-3.

This is how much a holy God loves: he sets the bar high and then gives us a leg-up to reach it. He doesn’t leave us to ourselves to figure it out. He comes to us–he chases us if he has to—and picks us up off the ash heaps where we throw ourselves. And he says something like, “Here’s a new life and a brand new heart. All you have to do is say yes,” Ro 5:8.

It’s not just for our benefit. It’s so God-in-us will dazzle others. It’s so all people, everywhere, will see who God is, the God who remakes our lives so that it’s unmistakably his doing, “Then the nations will realize who I really am, that I am God, when I show my holiness through you so that they see it with their own eyes,” Ez 36:23 MSG, emphasis added.

This has always been God’s plan, to create a family in love that loves him in return. To woo outsiders in. To bless everyone who trusts him with every good thing he can think of. To burn off what holds us back. To set us free to love and serve each another. To draw all people into blissful intimacy with himself.

It’s not people who finally get a clue and clean up their act. If there’s one thing the Old Testament teaches me, it’s that we simply can’t. Not even Abraham, Moses, or David could do it. It took the God who put on human flesh, who died and rose to “rebuild ruins and replant empty waste places,” to show us the way, so we can know him as The God Who Is Abba-Father, Ez 36:36 MSG.

God does it all.

All we do is say yes.

James 1

Here’s a chapter chock full of practical tips for living this new-hearted life God gives, but the bottom line is this: tests of faith will come.

The person who meets them and manages to hang on is rewarded with more and more life—a life that spills over into serving others. Don’t just hear the word. Do what it says, Js 1:12, 22, 26-27.

My doing is plagued by starts and quits, if I’m honest. But God’s not keeping score. He’s got more restarts stacked up than I can ever use up.

The secret for pleasing him isn’t doing it all right. It’s not giving up when I fail to do right. It’s running to him for the strength that I need, and in his strength, beginning again.

Psalm 115

The psalmist could’ve been writing for the exiles in Babylon, because what he says comforts anyone who fails God and needs forgiving.

He says put your trust in God alone. God is the only God there is. Stop looking to substitutes. Blind, deaf, and dumb—we look just like our idols when we trust in them, Ps 115:3-8.

It’s our choice who we trust, but only one choice brings life and lets us see and hear and speak for ourselves. Knowing God makes us more ourselves than we can be without him, Ps 115:9-11.

Why look anywhere else?

I can tell you: because I’m weak and forgetful. Because I let myself get distracted. Because in a low moment, I decide I know better than God does about what I need.

God’s not surprised by sin. It’s as old as Adam and Eve, and the good news of Jesus is that he’s dealt with it. We don’t have to drag it around like the corpse we can’t bury.

We are new creations. And we can live like it. So when we mess up and forget, we can grab a do-over by confessing it. Forgiveness pats us on the backside and puts us back in the game. This is what real living with a real God looks like, 2 Co 5:17, Ga 2:20.

Prayer

God, it’s hard to believe that you desire relationship with broken people who wander off and get lost, who don’t trust you, who think they know better about what’s best. People just like me. Thank you for the lengths you go to to woo and to bless. Thank you for never giving up on me.

In Jesus’ name.

Proverbs 27:23-27

Take care of your source of income. Pay it personal attention, whether flocks or crops or spouse. These come back to take care of you.

For a more thorough discussion of Ezekiel 35-36, particularly what it means to “know God,” see November 17–Not Your Typical Ex.

Bible passages in Ezekiel, James, Psalms, and Proverbs come from today’s selections in The One Year Bible.