This summer we have been reading from the Old Testament prophets. For the next two weeks the selections will be taken from Ezekiel. He is a prophet of exile whose mission was to help the Judeans in a foreign land understand that God was with them even in the midst of their difficulties. He could have written the book “why bad things happen to good people.” But more than justifying the ways of God Ezekiel strives to give the people a new way of relating to God not so much dependent on being people who live in a specific place who worship at a certain temple. Rather, Ezekiel (like Jeremiah) instructs the people to undergo an internal conversion and not merely on external practices.
