On the surface, Nehemiah is a construction story.

Stone, timber, gates, a wall. You can measure that kind of work. You can stand back at the end of a day and see how far you got.

Peel that back and it isn't about stone at all. It's about a people who had forgotten who they were.

Look at how he prays in chapter one. He doesn't say they have sinned. He says, "I and my father's house have sinned."

He puts himself inside the problem.

That is not a small thing. It is easy to describe a mess you believe you had no hand in. It is much harder to pray about it in the first person.

The wall was the visible layer. Underneath it were people who needed to remember whose they were.

You can rebuild the stone and still have nothing.

Jesus said, "For those who have ears to hear, let them hear."