I feel like the Lord lead me to Ezekiel 34 today. It is a wonderful passage of scripture. The thing is to me that I don't know a lot about the book of Ezekiel, only that a lot of weird stuff goes on in it. Before writing this I had to consult a commentary and at that I have found that the book is very complicated. Ezekiel is among the exiles in Babylon, and I can't talk much about the message he is carrying and to whom he is carrying it. Regardless, this leads me to study the book of Ezekiel better in the future. I believe the temple has been destroyed by this time Jews are in exile, it is looking pretty bad and they aren't expected to get out of exile any time soon.

Chapter 35 is intersting, it is about a shepherd, and sheep. You see the shepherds had grown fat, so they were judged in their obesity. Then there were the sheep, they had gone astray for lack of leadership. Ezekiel points out (as I take the cannonical purpose of Ezekiel) that God makes the decision to gather his sheep back together. Chapter 37 is one of those well known chapters about the dry bones comming to life. The dry bones represent Israel and they, as Israel will come back to life.

These allagories strike me from the perspective of one who wants to be clergy. I am reminded about how easy it is to make my Bible study a matter of acedemics instead of God. See, the greats, St Basil, Athenasius, even Augustine, the entire purpose of their writing was to bring people closer to God. If you read my booklist below you might even note that I add CS Lewis to this. All of these men had their flaws, but their point it to help people understand God and the things that keep us from him.

Things like that were all thrown out the window in the 19th century with the rise of modernism and of German Libralism (Libral meaning the critical study of scripture apart from faith). There is currently a rise in the desire to go back to faith based study. To making it be about knowing God.

Of course let me get back to why this chapter strikes me. Will I be a fat shepherd or a good shepherd. This has nothing to do with my weight but how I vew my ministry. Simply put will I make it God centered or me centered. One way that manifests istself is in my desire to work and play well with others. I don't think during the day, how can this bring me closer to God, I think , "what can I get out of this?" As a leader people will depend on me. That is why I have been so thankful that I have the chance to be in seminary. My time around spiritual giants changes me, humbles me, and helps me understand there is a mystery to all of this. But still, I fear, I fear of falling into the pit of being a fat shepherd.

Now I take into account that we read this section as a messianic prophesy and that I am not the "Good Shepherd," but it also makes me ask, "What kind of leader am I amongst the sheep?"