¡Manos a la obra!

Nehemiah 2:18    Nehemías 2:18
    "Entonces les conté cómo la bondadosa mano de Dios había estado conmigo y les relaté le que el rey me había dicho. Al oír esto, exclamaron:
--¡Manos a la obra!
    Y unieron la acción a la palabra." NVI
    “And I told them of the hand of my God which had been good upon me, and also of the king’s words that he had spoken to me.
    So they said, ‘Let us rise up and build.’ Then they set their hands to this good work.” NKJV

    So many times it is easy to get into a zombie bible reading mode. I start reading the bible stories and, well, it sounds like a lot of biblical stuff. It is very easy to read over verses like this one and not give it a second glance. Yeah, Nehemiah told them God was with him and that the king was going to help and they started to build. Wait a second though. This is right after Nehemiah springs this on them that they were even going to try to rebuild it.
    In this story, from the perspective of the Jews, a faraway ethnically Jewish man--a powerful man who worked at the right hand of the king--shows up in Jerusalem with no explanation. The next day he announces to the officials, the priests and the nobles that he actually came all that way to rebuild the wall.
    Not only that, but the God of Israel was backing him up on this and apparently so was a foreign king. I don’t know about you, but even if this meeting lasted for hours, that amount of strange information would have left me dumbfounded. My response would have been more along the lines of “Wait... what? I’m supposed to believe that?”
    But look at the response of the people. In the NVI it says they exclaimed “Hands to the Work! (Manos a la obra)” What kind of faith they must have had!

    It is striking to me how often and how prominently Nehemiah gives all glory to God in all things. Here he told them that the hand of God was upon him. For me, I would have loved to mention that, but I often--to my own dismay--feel like people will think I’m crazy for saying things like that. If I said, “Hey, God told me this” I feel like they would respond with a “So what have you been smoking lately?” at least in their hearts. I feel this way even in Christian circles, and I know it’s wrong.

    I need to give God the glory He deserves in all circumstances. After all, most things I have to say won’t probably sound nearly as absurd as what Nehemiah did in this verse. And even though it was a hard pill for most people to swallow, the hand of God truly was upon him, and he trusted God to sway the hearts of the Israelites as well.