The Wheels Within Wheels and the Rainbow Throne

Far, far from home, there was a river called the Kebar.

It was not the river the people loved. The river they loved ran through their own land, past their own city, beside the temple where God lived close to them. But King Nebuchadnezzar's soldiers had come and marched many of them away, all the long miles to a strange country called Babylon. Jerusalem itself was still standing behind them, and even so, the ones carried off could feel that sadder days were coming. Now they sat by this strange river, and they remembered.

They were afraid of something worse than the soldiers, worse than the long miles. They were afraid they had left God behind.

They thought, Surely he stayed in our land. Surely he stayed by the temple. How could he come all this way out here, to us, to nowhere?

A young man named Ezekiel, one of the ones the soldiers had carried away, sat by that river. And one ordinary day, he looked up.

A great wind was coming out of the north. A storm cloud, flashing, bright at its edges like gold pulled out of fire. And inside the brightness, Ezekiel saw the most astonishing thing.

Living creatures. Each one with wings, with faces, glowing like polished bronze. And beside them, wheels. Tall, sparkling wheels, a wheel turning inside of a wheel, rimmed all around with watching eyes. Wherever the creatures went, the wheels went too. Up, down, this way, that way, any direction at all, quick as a thought, never once needing to turn around.

Those wheels meant that God can go anywhere. No mile is too far for him, and no border can shut him out.

And above the creatures, above the wheels, there was something like a great clear dome, shining like ice in the sun. And above the dome, a throne, blue as the deep sky. And on the throne, glowing and warm and almost too bright to look at, was the Lord himself.

Then Ezekiel saw it. All around the throne, a glow of soft and shining colors, the way light bends in the clouds after the rain.

A rainbow. The rainbow.

Do you remember it? Long before, after the great flood, God had hung it in the sky as his own promise: I will not give up on my people. And here it was, wrapped all around his throne, way out in Babylon, way out by the river Kebar.

God had not stayed behind. He had come. He rode the storm and the whirling wheels across every mile his people had walked, weeping, and he found them in the very place they thought he could never reach.

Ezekiel fell on his face. And out of the dazzling brightness, a voice began to speak, gently, to one frightened, faraway man.

Hold this close, little one. A day was coming when that same glory would leave the high throne entirely and come down into our far country, our own Babylon, the place we could never find our way home from. He would have a name. Jesus. The God who cannot be left behind, here, with us, where we are.

He has never once left you behind. And he never, ever will.