I don’t get it. Seriously. My mind is not wired towards vivid imagery and such. If you check out movies I’ve watched you will find that it does not have in it fantasy thrillers, spaceships, or even superhero movies. I just don’t get it.

So when I come to things like Ezekiel 1 I struggle to understand. Ezekiel sees this fantastical vision of God with angels, a chariot, 4 headed creatures and more. There’s fire and holiness and other things.

What I do get is Ezekiel. He is a priest and if verse 1 is his age, then typically he would have been starting his priestly ministry. Except the conditions are not exactly favorable. He finds himself among the exiles in Babylon. So instead of a priestly ministry he would have been starting, instead God calls him as a prophetic voice.

This was significant was there were many prophetic voices at the time. Voices that proclaimed that the exiles would return soon, that things would go back to normal, and that life would be good again in the very future. It’s kind of like when someone is in a terrible accident and people come out of the woodwork saying they believe that person is going to be healed and restored. It may be the case and faith is good. But hopefully people are truly speaking what God has spoken and not just what one feels for the moments.

So Ezekiel. He is in Babylon. He is an exile. And God shows him this extraordinary imagery. I can’t even begin to dissect what it means. We just know that from verse 1 it says these are “visions of God.”

Are they part of the realities? Are they all symbolic? I don’t know. These were not necessarily pictures of God himself but rather “the appearance of the form of the LORD’s glory” (v. 28). What that means I’m not sure either.

Sometimes it’s ok to come to Scripture and say, ‘I don’t get it.’.

The key point is that this is a mighty vision of the glory of God. This was a moment. It was significant. And something important was about to take place.

It was also significant to this Jewish priest that the glory and power and might of God Almighty was not restricted to a temple in Jerusalem. He was so far above the temple and a city and was able to meet people anywhere. Including on the side of a river in a foreign land in captivity.