What are those
feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices?
Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those
heaps of rubble – burned as they are? (Nehemiah 4:2).
In his insightful
book Rebuilding the Real You, Jack Hayford compares Nehemiah and the
rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls with the Holy Spirit rebuilding the walls of
our lives [1]. The temple had been rebuilt, but the city’s means of protection
were only piles of rubble. Hayford says the temple illustrates our spiritual center,
whereas the work on the walls illustrates the longer and slower process of
rebuilding our personality – a sort of healing from the wounds of life.
Notice the
opposition to Nehemiah’s rebuilding project. When Sanballat . . .
heard about this, [he was] very much disturbed that someone had come to promote
the welfare of the Israelites (2:10). In our focus verse, Sanballat ridicules them for their efforts
to rebuild. Your enemy wants you to think what is broken must remain broken.
Hayford also reveals
that the name Nehemiah can
be literally translated as the comfort of Yahweh. Jesus said: And I will pray the
Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you
forever (KJV, John 14:16).
We want to stop short of allegorizing this text, but it’s interesting how
closely the restorative roles of Nehemiah in Jerusalem and the Holy Spirit in
our lives complement one another.
TODAY’S MEDITATION
Are the walls of your life
lying in disrepair? Do you ever wonder how you’ll rise above the rubble? Do you
need help rebuilding?
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