Today’s reading: Nehemiah 1-3

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope that everyone is enjoying family, friends and food.

There are a lot of things that can be said of this passage. I mean, think about it, we could do a whole sermon simply on Nehemiah mourning the ruins of Jerusalem and his immediate plea with God. His passion and desire to please the Lord is certainly something to imitate.

We could address how quickly God allowed everything to fall into place regarding providing Nehemiah the time and supplies to start work on the wall. God was clearly in control of the king and the provisions needed and we can see that.

There is also the small bit about the opposition, though there is a lot more to come later, we could discuss.

I think what struck me the hardest was how cooperative the Israelites were. Nehemiah walks into the scene unannounced and basically tells them to get to work. I don’t know about you, but I can be pretty stubborn. I like to have a reason for what I’m doing before I actually “get to work”. The Israelites didn’t need a “reason” from Nehemiah. They started repairing the wall immediately. It is almost as if they simply needed someone to come along and say, “Hey, we need to fix the wall. Let’s do this!” They needed inspiration and encouragement from someone on their team. They each repaired their own district and some other places as well, but they worked together. They weren’t arguing, grumbling or fighting, they were working together to get done what needed to be done.

So when a brother or sister needs help doing God’s work do we sit back and watch or are we as quick to respond as the Israelites?