After all that Hezekiah had so faithfully done, Sennacherib king of Assyria came and invaded Judah. He laid siege to the fortified cities, thinking to conquer them for himself. – 2 Chronicles 32:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 5, 2017): 2 Chronicles 32

In the Steven Spielberg movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the central premise of the film was that the Hebrew Ark of the Covenant was a physical force which could overcome any opposing army. Indiana Jones actually states at one point that an army that carried the Ark with it couldn’t be defeated. (Indiana probably should have read 1 Samuel, because the sons of the High Priest Eli thought the same thing, got routed and lost the Ark to the opposing Philistines.) But, according to Professor Jones, lightening would flash from the Ark destroying any force that opposed the army that possessed it. It was because of this ‘fact’ that a race develops between the Nazi scientists of 1940’s Germany and Indiana Jones to see who would be the first to find the Ark. If Hitler could only find it first – well, maybe the Second World War would have turned out differently. (Again, there is something of a mystery about Hitler using a Jewish artifact to win the war and exterminate the Jews, but then again, “The Raiders of the Lost Ark” is only a fictional story.)

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the story of the Ark – as well as the Story of the city of Tanis in the movie as the final resting place of the Ark – were stretched well beyond the truth. Tanis was a city known since the 19^th Century – not one recently discovered as the movie asserts – and the Ark, well, once again refer back to 1 Samuel.

But the central theme of the story fits in with a central idea about God in our current culture. The idea is this – being a Christian or a God-fearer means that the evil things of the world (in this case translate evil as anything that opposes your personal purposes) will never be able to touch you. When we carry God into the battle of our lives, things will always go our way. We may not overtly believe that (well, in some circles we do while in others we despise the idea), but even in circles that would look down on what we might call prosperity theology when things go wrong, we still wonder what it is that we have done wrong to God.

The story of Hezekiah illustrates one of the issues that we seem to have with religion, namely that sometimes bad things happen even when we are faithful. When the bad things happen in life, the appropriate response is to trust more. Bad circumstances have never been promised not to touch us. And their presence in our lives doesn’t mean that God has left the building. God still has a plan, and even in the midst of our worst moments and we, like Hezekiah, still have a part to play in his story.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 46 & 47