Ezekiel 3:8
Behold, I have made your face hard against their faces, and your forehead hard against their foreheads.
Many people fancy that a truly spiritual life is one that is lived in cloudy contemplation, somewhere in the silent stratosphere above the fray. Ezekiel, like all the prophets, showed that this is bunk because Ezekiel, like all the prophets, had to roll up his sleeves and do a hard, thankless job. His task was to tell Israel what Israel was downright hostile to hearing. In a world dominated by sin, that is always the task of a prophet. And sometimes, the best thing that God can give us in such a world is a skin of very tough leather so that we can get the job done. Today, ask God to equip you for the work of mission so that you can be wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove.
