Everyone finds their security in something. Whether it’s our job, a relationship, our image, or wealth, we all have that one thing that we can find comfort in. Then when our significance as a person is threatened, we tighten our hold onto this thing we have found security in. In my first few years in high school, I found my security in attaining popularity among my peers. I would strive every day, no matter the cost, to have everyone around me to like me. I didn’t care how I had to act; I would make a complete fool of myself if it resulted in the approval of just one person.
This brings us to chapter 21 of The Story. The Israelites are rebuilding the temple walls, and while doing so they are threatened by outsiders to stop them. Then, under the encouragement and persistence of Nehemiah, the Israelites worked day and night to complete the wall. Nehemiah had them “serve as guards by night and as workers by day.” The workers went as far as wearing their swords on their sides as they worked. Then finally, after 52 days, the wall was completed.
Even though they finished the wall, the Israelites still had a major problem left to fix. Their hearts were out of place. They were disobeying the Law of Moses by intermarrying with other villages and offering displeasing sacrifices to God. They justified being able to do these wrong things because they had finished their great wall that they had worked so very hard for. Even though they were straying from their faith, they had security in the wall they built.
The Israelites thought it would satisfy God to just do these ritualistic things for Him, but in reality, God wanted them to give Him their hearts. So many times in this life I have found myself doing so many things “for” God instead of “with” God. It is important to remember that God desperately desires an intimate relationship with us. So desperate that He gave His one and only son for us to be able to.
My prayer is that we find security in the temple that God is making us into through Christ, and not in the temples we build on this earth.
