I sat in my favourite cafe and as I looked around one of the first things to catch my eye was the word 'walls' written on the side of an icecream cabinet. As I looked at it I was reminded of another wall in the bible; the wall in Jerusalem, that half a century after the rebuilding of the temple, we see Nehemiah weeping over, weeping, fasting and praying before God because the wall of Jerusalem was still broken down.
Here in Nehemiah the fact that the city wall was broken down meant there was no protection from marauders / robbers. The people were at risk of being attacked and without a wall for protection even the temple was at risk of being ransacked or worse and if there was no temple the presence of God would have nowhere to dwell, so it was on Nehemiah's heart to rebuild the broken down wall.
Walls seem to represent safety and I wondered can we relate any of this to our spiritual walk?. Is there a wall in our life that we've built to help us get through the day. Did we build a wall to keep others at arms length or perhaps to hide behind to prevent us being hurt.
When a wall has been built there's a tendency to want it knocked down but that isn't always easy because the wall helps us feel safe.
Now just say we've pushed through, we've managed to knock down some walls but we're feeling a little exposed, we don't feel quite as safe as we did with the wall there, what do we do?
I'm going to suggest that we quite simply trust, trust the Lord to keep us safe and that perhaps he wants us to rebuild some of those broken down places in our life because he wants his presence to have a place to dwell.
"Do you not know", Paul says, "you are the temple of God and the spirit of God dwells in you" (1 Corinthians 3:16).
Nehemiah was about rebuilding a literal broken down wall: with the Lord's help should we be about rebuilding a spiritual broken down wall. .
I don't know if you've already knocked down a few walls:
I don't know if you're still hiding behind a wall of years of hurt or broken relationships and still have a sense of dread, distress, disappointment:
I don't know if you can't even name the reason you built a wall in the first place but it's still there and it's never coming down.
I don't know, but I do know the God who loves us and wants what's best for us. He wants those walls to come down and he will help us rebuild those broken down places of hurt, disappointment, sadness, addictions and many more and his presence will really be seen in our life.
I cried when I read Nehemiah. I saw his sadness as he wept then spoke to the king about what was troubling him, but I also saw his heart as he set about restoring and rebuilding the broken down walls of the city after talking with the Lord.
Is it time to be asking "which walls need to come down Lord, which ones are preventing your presence to be really seen in my life" and then to ask "where do I start the rebuilding".
