If your wife dies don't shed a tear - Ezekiel 19-24

The life of a prophet is a tough gig! In this passage Ezekiel has had to "take up a lamentatioin" for the nation of Israel (19:1). A lamentation is a mourning ... a time to cry and wail for the loss of something. Ezekiel is "told" to lament the loss of Israel's faithfulness and their going into captivity for their disobedience. If you read this section you will read why God is pouring His wrath out on His people. They have committed lewd acts of idolatry against Him. So, we have the sin, the wrath, the discipline and the lament. You would expect people to cry and to wail the loss of their land, their children, their temple, their relationship with their God. Yet, in chapter 24 we read that God is going to take Ezekiel's wife "with a blow" (24:16). If that isn't bad enough God tells Ezekiel (in the midst of this "lament") that he is not allowed to lament, or cry, for the loss off his wife. God seems to be saying: The sin of Israel is so bad that it doesn't deserve a tear. Ezekiel is to demonstrate that. We don't grasp this because we don't have the same feelings toward sin that God does. We don't see that idolatry is a wicked, wicked thing and we do it every day. We put things up we worship (we desire) and we put those desires before our desire to serve God and mortify sin in our lives. I don't find it easy to look at Ezekiel losing his wife and not crying or mourning. God seems to know how important Ezekiel's wife is to him: God describes Ezekiel's wife as "the desire of your eyes." So, Ezekiel has a wife he absolutely desires and God is going to take her and he is not allowed to cry about it. All this to demonstrate how serious sin is to God and how He wants us to feel about it. Do you and I feel that bad about sin?