He stood among the myrtle trees. The earth was quiet. It shouldn't have been.
📖Based on Zechariah 1:8
He saw it in the night.
A man riding a red horse. Standing among the myrtle trees in a hollow.
Behind him, horses. Red, speckled, white.
The angel who talked with Zechariah was there too.
What are these, my lord?
The answer came from the man among the myrtle trees himself.
These are they whom the LORD hath sent to walk to and fro through the earth.
Patrols. Scouts. Sent out to observe. To report.
And the report they brought back was troubling in its stillness.
We have walked to and fro through the earth, and, behold, all the earth sitteth still, and is at rest.
Not peace.
Stillness.
And the angel of the LORD said: O LORD of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem?
Seventy years of indignation. Seventy years of the nations that had scattered and broken the people of God sitting comfortable while the holy city lay in ruins.
The LORD answered the angel. With good and comfortable words.
I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy.
I am very sore displeased with the heathen that are at ease.
The stillness was not rest. It was the quiet before the reversal.
The nations that had prospered at Jerusalem's expense were about to encounter the jealousy of God.
The red rider's report of a quiet earth was not reassurance.
It was documentation.
Proof that the time for comfortable ease was running out.
And the myrtle grove would not stay shadowed forever.
Scripture — Zechariah 1:8
"I saw by night, and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom; and behind him were there red horses, speckled, and white."
Reflection
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God's patrols never stop. Heaven observes what earth ignores.
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A world that sits still and at ease while justice is delayed is not at peace. It is being documented.