Difficult times not only try a person's soul but frequently force a person to step up to a new challenge. Perhaps this has been your experience: You are at a crossroad unsure of which direction to head, so you venture out blazing a new path. Later, when you look back you realize that particular experience was a turning point in your life. There may even be times when something unexpected happens that thrusts you in some new uncharted course. The people living in Ezekiel's day were living in exile, taken against their will living in a foreign land, Babylon. Hope was beginning to fade as a sense of doom overshadowed them. Ezekiel stepped up to the task and became a powerful voice offering the people a vision of hope. He emerged as one of the leaders of the exile and, like the prophets of old…