Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and teacher of the Law, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law.
Nehemiah 8:9 (NIV)

I don’t like to be confined into a row of chairs during worship. I like to stretch out and move. Wendy is the same way. During worship among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers, we will stand in the back. Sometimes, this means that individuals entering or walking by will stop to talk. So it was one morning when I turned to find a man weeping.

“I’m drunk,” he said, though he didn’t need to say it. He reeked of it.

I smiled and nodded.

“But you’re here,” I answered. “I’m glad you are.”

He didn’t need rejection. He was drowning in rejection. He needed a refuge. How much faith did it take to walk into a worship service drunk?

My new friend had it rough. The road of life had led him to some dark and difficult places. He’d make a lot of foolish choices. He’d been raised in faith, but he walked away and chose to forget. Then, he found himself needing refuge from his fears, his failings, and his addictions. He stumbled into a worship service.

I think today’s chapter needs to be viewed in a much larger context. The Hebrew people had spent over a century living in exile. Even after 70 years, when the first exiles returned, they had largely forgotten the faith of their fathers. Reading was uncommon, and copies of the Books of Moses were rare. They were just walking life’s journey without faith or guidance. By the time Nehemiah arrived and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, it had been more like 140 years since the exile began.

Now the walls are built. The gates are hung. For the first time in five generations the Hebrew people are together. They finally have refuge inside the city of their ancestors. The priest pulls out the Books of Moses and begins to read the Great Story from the beginning. Most of them are hearing the Story for the first time. They hear of God’s creation, His promises to Abraham, His provision for Jacob and the tribes, His deliverance of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt, His calling and covenant to be His people and what that meant.

There in the refuge of their home city, the people not only listen, but they hear God calling them home spiritually. He calls them to return to becoming the people, His children, that they were meant to be.

They begin to weep. This is all taking place by the Water Gate. The God who divides the deep and creates the universe. The God who divides the waters of the Red Sea to save them from their enemies. The God who divides the waters of the Jordan to usher them into His Promised Land. The God who washes, waters, bathes, cleanses, and renews.

Nehemiah reminds them that God is calling them out of the weeping of repentance and into the joy of restored relationship. For the first time in hundreds of years, since the time of Joshua, the people celebrate God’s prescribed festival of the tabernacles.

Both physically and spiritually, they have come back home.

Over the past year or so I’ve read a number of stories from people who have wandered home to faith. The stories follow a common theme. As young people they walked away from the faith in which they were raised. They were too intelligent to believe all that nonsense. They got educated, had careers, and wandered life’s road. But something happened along the way in the craziness of a world that has become increasingly unhinged. Drunk on fear and futility, they found themselves stumbling back home where they found a refuge, and where Life began to be restored within.

Just like Nehemiah and the Hebrews in today’s chapter. The restoration of the walls and gates led to a very different restoration. There is something spiritually universal in this story and in the experience of returning to the refuge of God’s grace and forgiveness, and finding there restoration of Life and Spirit.

In the quiet this morning, the words of an old hymn whisper in my soul:

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, 
calling for you and for me; 
see, on the portals he’s waiting and watching, 
watching for you and for me.
Come home, come home; 
you who are weary come home; 
earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, 
calling, O sinner, come home!

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.