Details, details. When my daughter was small and came home from school, I often asked her how her day was. She would then launch into the story of her day with excruciating details. I knew I was in trouble when her sentence started out, "You see, what happened was..."
Nehemiah 7 reads about like that. Seventy-three verses and most of it is dedicated to listing people and numbers. The wall is completed, and Nehemiah appoints leaders. He also takes a census and sees that each family is returned back to their town.
By the end of the chapter, we find the population has totaled 42,360 plus their 7,337 servants and 245 singers. He even counted the 736 horses, 245 mules, 435 camels, and 6,720 donkeys. And goes on to list the things that families contributed for the work.
That's a lot of details.Why would this chapter be right in the middle of Nehemiah? I mean, who really cares, right?
This type of passage always reminds me that God is a God of order. He attends to even the smallest detail and no one person, animal, or gift is unimportant to Him. And I take comfort in that because some days I feel like I'm not very important in the big wide world, or on the to-do list of the God of the universe. But right here, He is telling us that is not true. All the people and all the details matter to Him.
So where are you feeling forgotten today? Take some encouragement from the places in scripture where God shares minute details, and remember that He has not and will not forget you.
- Holly Barrett
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