Have you ever desired to be nobody, to have nothing, be insignificant, to only have what God provides? Today’s passage is for you.
The Babylonians had conquered all of Palestine, taken captive those remaining in Jerusalem, destroyed the royal city. Thousands had been marched off to resettlement in Babylon. All the powerful, prestigious, elite and the prosperous were gone. The onlies remaining were ‘some of the poor who had nothing.’ 1
Shockingly, the Babylonian regent gives to the poorest ‘vineyards and fields’ for which they had not worked, could not buy and, in the natural, had no rights to for themselves. Imagine the surprise of being so poor that you had not been taken to Babylon and then awakening to find that you had been given the means of life, the ability to occupy the Promised Land under the auspices of the conquerors.
How do you get your head around God making a way for you where there was no way? You had no expectation of anything save destitution and poverty and yet suddenly, by the act of God moving the heart of the regent, you are now the occupier of your own vineyard and farmland. God has made the way for you to prosper out of the very poverty that had been your constant life.
Jesus spoke of how the Father turns our perception into His desires in Matthew 5. While we don’t claim a direct connection, doesn’t this fit?
Isn’t God able to bring beauty out of ashes, deliverance out of defeat, joy out of mourning? God isn’t done until He completes His purposes and there is no one too small, too unimportant, too insignificant for Him to reach into their life and change their outcome. How has God reached into your life and brought light out of darkness, fruit out of famine, joy out of despair?