Have you noticed how news reporters love to ask the question, “How did you feel?” Young newsmen roam through a community that was devastated by a tornado and then asks victims: “How did you feel when you heard the tornado coming your way?” Viewers can usually guess the obvious answers to these kind of questions.
Does anyone take time today to pose this question to God? How does God feel about what’s going on in the world today? In our country? In my family? In my own life? How does God communicate his feelings?
Throughout salvation God has communicated how he feels through the voice of anointed prophets. Ezekiel the priest was one such prophet. Today we get a vivid description of how God speaks to, and uses, a prophet (Ezekiel 2:8-3:4).
“The Lord God said to me: As for you, son of man, obey me when I speak to you; be not rebellious like this house of rebellion, but open your mouth and eat what I shall give you.”
God speaks to Ezekiel the way a parent speaks to her child. “Obey me when I speak to you…open your mouth and eat…” He tells Ezekiel to be different from his “brothers and sisters” who have closed their ears to the voice of God and pursued their rebellious ways. God wants to feed Ezekiel a special food from heaven.
“It was then I saw a hand stretched out to me, in which was a written scroll which he unrolled before me. It was covered with writing front and back, and written on it was: Lamentation and wailing and woe!”
God had torn a page from his diary and it was covered on both sides with his feelings about Israel. As he glanced over the scroll, Ezekiel realized that God was lamenting and wailing—he was greatly upset.
Did God tell Ezekiel to sit down, study, and memorize the words from his diary? No, there was no time for that. How could Ezekiel learn these words? He did so in an unusual way:
“Son of man, eat what is before you; eat this scroll, then go speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth and he gave me the scroll to eat.”
God took his whole bundle of feelings and fed them to the prophet. He took them inside himself and began to feel the feelings of God.
“Son of man…feed your belly and fill your stomach with this scroll I am giving you.”
Ezekiel’s own feelings would be replaced with those of God. As he ate the scroll he became filled to the brim with what was going on in the heart of God. He was to go, then, and voice the feelings of God in his own human words. His heart would “translate” the heavenly diary into language that people could understand. As we read Ezekiel we see how colorful and powerful are his words. In the midst of the chaos, empty noise, and revelry, God spoke. All the time they were partying, God was grieving and even wailing.
Does God care enough about our world and our personal lives to let us know exactly how he feels? Is God trying to feed chosen servants of our day with words from his diary?
We are saturated more than ever before in history with words—opinions and feelings of politicians, talk-show hosts, protesters, religious leaders. How important it is that we get away from this clamor, and search the depths of our own hearts, to listen to God’s feelings. What is he speaking to his people?
Where can we find an “Ezekiel” of our age—one who knows the true feelings of God? How hungry are we to eat and be changed by God’s food?
“I gasp with open mouth, in my yearning for your commands” (Ps 119:131).
