Even during exile, the Lord speaks through the faithful.
Jeremiah and Lamentations give us a spirituality of judgment, punishment, and discipline. The Lord brings justice. Turning from the Lord has consequences. But the Lord loves his people, so he disciplines them for their own good. There are profound words of hope in these books, but hope comes only after God's people have returned to the Lord.
Ezekiel has amazing visions from God--heavenly chariots, a new Jerusalem, and dry bones brought back to life. What is unique about his prophetic life are the symbolic acts, many of them strange, that he does. He eats a scroll, lies on one side for more than a year, then lies on the other side for forty days. He not only speaks the word of the Lord, he enacts it. The spirituality of Ezekiel focuses on the faithfulness of God. Although Israel and Judah have repeatedly been unfaithful to the Lord, he welcomes them back and restores them to life with him.
Most people remember the stories in Daniel--the fiery furnace and the lion's den. These stories reflect the spiritual practices that sustained the faith of Daniel and others during the exile. Even more significant for Christian readers are Daniel's visions, especially the vision of the Ancient of Days and the son of man. Daniel points us both to spiritual practices of the present while giving us pictures of a glorious future under the reign of the Lord.
