"Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the LORD, the God of Israel — he is the God who is in Jerusalem.
Cyrus wasn't Jewish. He was a Persian king who had just conquered Babylon, and yet here he is issuing a decree that credits the God of Israel — not his own gods — with giving him all the kingdoms of the earth, and instructing him specifically to let an exiled people go home and rebuild what had been destroyed.
That's a strange detail to sit with: an outsider, someone with no reason to care about this particular story, ends up being the hinge that turns it. Decades of exile, generations who assumed they'd die in a foreign land, and then a foreign king's decree becomes the door back.
Maybe you've never thought of yourself as someone this story could involve — you're not the exiled people, you're not even sure you believe there's a God running the show at all. But Cyrus wasn't exactly a believer either, at least not in any tidy sense, and he still ended up being used to open a door he never expected to open.
If you've never thought of yourself as someone God might use even without your full belief, this story leaves room for that possibility.
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.