A broken heart that re-built a city
“Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire?” (Nehemiah 2:3).
I have always found so much spiritual help in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. They begin in places of desolation and darkness and end in remarkable blessing. God had to humble His people and take them to the lowest place so that He could teach them His faithfulness and power. The people we meet in these books were godly people who suffered because their nation had turned its back on God. They went into exile and experienced the bitterness of being robbed of all they held precious. Yet in a foreign land and a culture of idolatry, they maintained a living faith in a living God.
But the return to Jerusalem to build the Temple did not begin in the hearts of godly Jews. It began in the heart of God. In the opening verse of the book of Ezra we read: “Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia” (Ezra 1:1). The monarch was commanded directly by God to rebuild the Temple and a remnant of people returned to Judah, and there we learn of the ministry of Ezra. Some 20 years later, Nehemiah heard about the walls of Jerusalem being in ruins and it broke his heart, “So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven” (Nehemiah 1:4).
There are many things which can break our hearts and fill them with a sense of hopelessness. We can be trapped by wounds that will not heal and pain that will not go away. Nehemiah’s broken-heartedness took him into the presence of God. Day after day he allowed his tears to flow and grief to overwhelm him. He pleaded with God in prayer, confessing his people’s sin, and appealed to Him to restore them. And he asked God to grant him mercy in the sight of the king. But unlike Hannah, who prayed and then was no longer sad, Nehemiah’s sadness could not be hidden, and it put his life at risk. He served a monarch who held supreme power, who could end a servant’s life without a second thought. And the king recognised Nehemiah’s “sorrow of heart”.
It is astonishing that the empire that destroyed Jerusalem and made its people captive was succeeded by another empire whose monarch God instructed to rebuild the Temple. Then years later, He used Nehemiah’s broken heart to influence King Artaxerxes to allow him to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
It was the Lord’s broken heartedness that led to our redemption. Our broken-heartedness is not without purpose:
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart –These, O God, You will not despise (Psalm 51:17).
May we have the faith to place our sorrow in the hands of the Man of Sorrows, so that we do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is our strength (see Nehemiah 8:10).
