Scripture Daily

Context No. 536 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 40:24-31: in context

24He led me toward the south; and behold, there was a gate toward the south. He measured its posts and its arches according to these measurements. 25There were windows in it and in its arches all around, like the other windows: the length was fifty cubits, and the width twenty-five cubits. 26There were seven steps to go up to it, and its arches were before them. It had palm trees, one on this side, and another on that side, on its posts. 27There was a gate to the inner court toward the south. He measured one hundred cubits from gate to gate toward the south. 28Then he brought me to the inner court by the south gate. He measured the south gate according to these measurements; 29with its lodges, its posts, and its arches, according to these measurements. There were windows in it and in its arches all around. It was fifty cubits long, and twenty-five cubits wide. 30There were arches all around, twenty-five cubits long and five cubits wide. 31Its arches were toward the outer court. Palm trees were on its posts. The ascent to it had eight steps.

We are again inside Ezekiel's temple vision, being led gate by gate as the guide measures each one. It is repetitive by design, the same lodges and posts and windows and palm trees appearing at gate after gate. But there is one detail in this section that repays a slow eye. The guide leads the prophet up to the south gate of the outer court, and it has seven steps. Then he brings him further in, to the gate of the inner court, and that gate has eight steps. As you move inward, closer to the center where God's presence dwells, the ascent increases. Each gate deeper in is set higher, requiring another step up than the one before.

That small, easily-missed pattern says something about drawing near to God. The approach to him is not a single threshold you cross once and then stand on level ground forever. It is a series of ascents, each inner court lifted higher than the last, so that coming closer always means climbing further. There is no gate at which the steps stop, no point in the design where you have arrived and need rise no more. To go deeper toward the center is, at every stage, to be called up another flight of stairs. Nearness to God is not a destination you reach and settle at; it is a continual ascent inward.

That quietly rebukes a place I am prone to settle. It is easy to reach some comfortable stage in my life with God and treat it as arrival, to stand on the plateau I have climbed to and assume this is as near as the approach goes, no more steps required. Ezekiel's gates keep rising, seven then eight and higher still further in, insisting there is always another ascent toward the center. Have I mistaken a plateau for the summit, settling on the step I reached long ago, when the way toward God keeps calling me up higher, and where is the next flight I have been declining to climb?

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