Week 26 Ezekiel
I wondered what chapter one would be like without the fantastic vision. Maybe something like this: on July 31 of my thirtieth year, while I was with the Judean exiles beside the Kebar River in Babylon, the heavens were opened to me, and I saw visions of God…And when I saw it, I fell down in the dust, and I heard someone’s voice speaking to me.
This condensed version gets me straight from Point A – the heavens opening – to Point B – Ezekiel falling on his face. But Ezekiel decided not to skip the 25 perplexing verses of his astounding disorienting vision.
I wonder what to do with that fantastic paragraph. There’s some actual-real-world things I can imagine. A wind storm. Four human-like figures each with four faces – human-lion-bull-&-eagle. Four wings. Straight legs. Human hands. Rigid necks but mobile bodies that move geometrically & precisely – but also irregularly and spontaneously. Wheels – but bio-mechanical contraptions with many eyes.
But in spite of what I can guess at I sit wondering what to do with it – mentally scrambling with a few identifiables but basically at-sea for 25-verses.
If I was sitting in Police Point Park at the bend in the South Saskatchewan River and suddenly had a kind of auditory-visual psychedelically hallucinatory event…and when that was done the Lord told me something concrete then I’d probably only tell you what the Lord said – in case you thought I was delusional. But Ezekiel tells the whole incredible story.
Note: quotes from Ezekiel 1:1 & 28 (NLT)