“Take and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter,but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.Revelation 10:9
I ached all over. My stomach was upset, and I felt hot. “Feverish,” Momma said. It was mid-morning, and I was still in my pajamas. Sitting at the kitchen table, I eyed Momma suspiciously as she efficiently moved from refrigerator to drawer to cabinet.
She stretched to reach the cabinet’s top shelf, where she kept all of her “doctoring” paraphernalia: band-aids, ointments, a thermometer, aspirins, and all sorts of nasty bottled concoctions.
She grabbed the thermometer first. Then my heart dropped as I saw her retrieve a bottle containing the most vile liquid that had ever passed my lips. Paregoric.* I couldn’t remember the name or how to pronounce it, but I recognized the bottle and remembered its taste vividly. I still remember.
Momma carefully poured a small amount of the clear brown liquid into the cup on the countertop. She added about twice as much milk. The milk turned a sickly, swirling brown. She stirred a spoon of sugar into the loathsome potion, then turned towards me.
I begged. I cried. I gagged. I held my nose. Momma held my nose. Somehow, I managed to empty the cup of sweet but tainted milk. Soon, my stomach began to settle, and my aches began to ease. After a long late-morning nap, I awoke ready for a bowl of chicken noodle soup, crackers, 7-up, and Art Linkletter’s House Party segment “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”
Momma’s home remedy was bitter, but in the end, I was better.
Ezekiel, God’s prophet, watchman, and messenger to the wayward Children of Israel, knew well the bitterness of the medicine administered to God’s people because of their idolatry, disobedience, and wicked ways. Ezekiel was not simply an observer.
Bitterness touched Ezekiel directly:
He was an exile in Babylon (Eze. 1).
He spent 430 days laying on his left and right sides to symbolize the number of years of punishment that Israel (390) and Judah (40) would experience(Eze. 4).
During the 430 days, he subsisted on water and barley cake baked over cow dung, symbolizing the hunger and starvation coming to Israel (Eze. 4).
He lost his ability to speak. Ezekiel could speak only when God released his tongue so that he could deliver a prophetic message (Eze. 3:26-27).
Ezekiel wasn’t allowed to grieve when his beloved wife- “the delight of his eyes” – died, as another sign of Israel’s coming judgment (Eze. 24:15-27).
Indeed, many of the prophetic messages Ezekiel received were bitter medicine for the people of Israel and Judah, as well as for their enemies. Bitter messages for Ezekiel to hear and deliver. Bitter messages that grieved his spirit.
Ezekiel’s obedience in the bitter allowed him to enjoy the better.
Throughout Ezekiel’s life, God gloriously and overwhelmingly gifted Ezekiel with glimpses of His love, mercy, and glory.
In the vision of the valley of dry bones, Ezekiel witnessed the Spirit of God breathe life into lifeless bones, reconstituting each body until the valley filled with an “exceedingly great army” ready for battle, representing the future restoration of Israel and Judah (Eze. 37:1-14).
God revealed His glory in four visions given to the prophet. Overwhelmed and overcome by the revelations, each time, Ezekiel said, “I fell on my face.” All he could do was bow and worship the Lord of Lords and King of Kings.
God revealed to Ezekiel that a day of redemption, restoration, and renewal was coming for a united Israel and all mankind. A perfect King and Shepherd would one day rule over all.
Ezekiel experienced the bitter, but he received tastes of the better.
In the first chapters of Ezekiel, God instructed the prophet to listen and obey, unlike his rebellious countrymen. Then God told Ezekiel to “eat what I give you.”
Ezekiel was handed a scroll inscribed front and back with “words of lamentation and mourning and woe.” Again, God instructed Ezekiel to eat what he had been given.
The scroll did not look edible. It was not appetizing in the least. It looked like a bitter mouthful. But in obedience, Ezekiel ate.
“Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey”
Ezekiel 3:3b
When we are obedient in the bitter, God will surprise us with unexpected Spirit-filled blessings of the better.
In this life, we all experience bitter times. God gives us times in the bitter to grow us so that we more fully understand and more deeply appreciate the better.
There is much for us to learn from the testimony of Ezekiel’s life:
Ezekiel was obedient in the hard things,
Ezekiel’s relationship with God gave him strength to persevere in times of physical, emotional, and mental suffering,
Ezekiel believed that God was Lord of Over All, that He spoke only truth, and that what He said would come to pass,
And Ezekiel was certain that God was in all ways, always and forever, better.
We have the advantage of knowing the One who personifies better – the One who is Perfectly Better.
Jesus Christ, God the Son – our Lord and Savior, is the better Adam, the better Moses, the better Covenant, the better Shepherd, the better High Priest, the better Sacrifice, and He is the better Hope.
He is our better Hope. Perfectly Better. The Best.
“…You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject Him who warns from heaven.”
Hebrew 12:22-25 ESV
NOTE: Paregoric was used in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries as a household remedy for diarrhea, as an expectorant and cough medicine, to calm children, and rubbed on (babies’ gums) to ease the pain from teething.
Early in the 20th century, the federal government began regulating the sale of paregoric since its main ingredient is opium. However, it was available over the counter at most pharmacies until well into the 1970s.
