The company is great, and the conversation is divine!

Scripture

Ezekiel 34:15-17
15 I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. 16 I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice. 
17 As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats: ...

Observation

The connection between this passage in Ezekiel and Matthew 25 is what grabs me today.

Matthew 25:31-46
The Judgment of the Nations
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. ...

Lately I have been marvelling at the many interconnections within scripture. It is amazing to me that these similarities arise in books written across hundreds of years and in widely different social situations.

I don't take this to be miraculous, nor am I satisfied by any explanation that amounts to God speaking through different people in different times and places as puppets with no brains or voices of their own.

I see these similarities as the product of faithful attendance by people like you and I to the living and ever-reforming Word of God and to the weight of testimony of our ancestors in faith. This is what I am marvelling at: when I study and dialogue with scripture I am diving deep into a process that has been ongoing for several millennia now! Not only that, but it is a process that the heroes of our faith have themselves been engaged in. So, when we do these devotions we come to hear a word from the Lord our God, and we do, and that is amazing. But, to top-it-all off, if we listen carefully, we can also hear the likes of Isaiah, and Ezekiel, and Calvin, and Luther, and Augustine, and ... Wow!

Application:

Maybe you have been previously asked to imagine you had the opportunity to sit down for a conversation with any person from history and then to decide who you would choose? I have always thought that was a cool scenario to imagine. Today's devotion helps me to see that the simple discipline - which the tempter would have me believe is boring and mundane - of entering daily into scripture can be just such an opportunity.

Prayer:

Thanks God! You are such a great host! You convene these amazing parties, where all are invited, and everyone gets to be in on the conversation. You have so much to say and so much to teach me, and yet, You patiently listen too. Help me to follow your lead, and join the unending conversation (and hymn). Amen.