Ezra and the tree mouse

Yesterday morning I was teaching Sunday School. We were doing the book of Ezra, so on Saturday I read it through again to make sure I have the story straight. And there I found a problem; in chapter 9, Ezra arrives in Jerusalem and discovers the Jews have taken non-Jewish wives and had children with them. It’s agreed this is a bad thing. The men divorce their wives, and the non-Jews are made to leave.

I hate this story. I can barely reconcile it with my idea of God, God who loves and welcomes all people. God who forgives sins. God of family values, God who cares for the welfare of widows and orphans…in this story banishing children and wives.  I’m so glad that I only had to teach up to chapter 6 because I don’t know how I could tell children this story.

Then after church I had to refill the birdfeeder hanging in my garden.  There’s a little mouse who keeps climbing up the tree and getting at the feeder. I was torn. On the one hand it was a cute liddle mousey-wousey and he only wanted to eat. But on the other hand he was eating up the food I brought for the birds and scaring them away. I moved the feeder to where I thought he couldn’t reach it. Later I saw him climb to it in the new position.  I admired his determination and ability to eat hanging upside-down, but I moved the feeder again.

It hit me that – just maybe- God was likewise torn by his decision to cleanse Jerusalem. I rather liked the little mouse, but that’s not what my birdfeeder is for. And perhaps it wasn’t that he didn’t care for the women and children, but that wasn’t who his city was for.

I know I shouldn’t extrapolate God’s thought from human emotion. But today my reaction to the mouse has helped me understand the bible. I still don’t like this story, and I still don’t really understand it. But now I feel it might one day be within my grasp to accept and understand that Ezra’s God as the same as my own.