Ben-Hadad agreed with King Asa and sent the commanders of his forces against the towns of Israel. They conquered Ijon, Dan, Abel Maim and all the store cities of Naphtali. – 2 Chronicles 16:4

Today's Scripture Reading (February 19, 2026): 2 Chronicles 16

Although the first two World Wars were very different, Germany's plans at the outset of both wars were remarkably similar. The idea in both wars was to deal quickly with France and create a one-front war in the east. In World War I, they weren't able to achieve that goal, at least not fast enough. During World War II, they achieved their goal. Using minimal efforts, the Nazis were able to restrain the United Kingdom to existing miserably on their island, while the German war machine concentrated on Russia and the Eastern Front.

By the time of the Tehran Conference, November 28 – December 1, 1943, the United Kingdom was committed to securing a foothold on the continent and opening a Western Front in the war. The Tehran Conference was the first meeting of the Big Three allied nations: The United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union. It would also be the last time these three nations met until the Yalta Conference in February 1945. At the Tehran Conference, Joseph Stalin made it clear that the Soviet Union needed a second front. They needed some relief from the German onslaught they had been fighting against on the Eastern Front.

The primary outcome of the Tehran Conference was the Big Three's agreement to open a second front in the war by June 1, 1944. It was not going to be an easy task, but the Soviet Union needed relief and assistance from its Western partners. Part of the problem was the weather. Not only did they need a plan and human resources, but they needed a break from the winter storms that dominated the Atlantic Ocean. The hope was that by the end of May, everything would be ready for an attack on the Atlantic coast of France, and that the weather would allow them to gain a foothold and a landing place where the allies could bring both the men and materiel needed for the Western Front of the war.

If you remember your World War II history, you might know that the target date set by the Tehran Conference was not met. The Normandy invasion was five days late; the invasion of France began on June 6, 1944. But Normandy was a second front; it gave the Soviet Union the relief it needed, and was a critical factor in the Allied forces being able to defeat the Nazi's in World War II.

Ben-Hadad had a treaty with Asa in Judah. Not only was there a treaty, but Asa had paid well for Ben-Hadad's help. As a result of that treaty and payment, Ben-Hadad was willing to force Baasha of Israel to open up a second front in his conflict with Judah. It also forced Baasha to stop building his fortress city of Ramah, a key measure to prevent the faithful people of Israel from visiting Judah and Jerusalem and from worshipping at the Temple as God had commanded.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 17

Although he did not remove the high places from Israel, Asa's heart was fully committed to the LORD all his life. – 2 Chronicles 15:17

Today's Scripture Reading (February 18, 2026): 2 Chronicles 15

Leaders often seem to come in two basic forms. The most common leader is the one who conforms to our expectations. They are "just like us." They share the same idea of right and wrong, and often we respect them because of their willingness to "speak plainly what is on their minds." There is no danger in doing that because, in reality, what is on their minds is also on ours. In a very real way, these are not leaders; they are social directors, sharing the journey with us and giving us permission to do and believe what we already want to do and believe.

The much rarer form of a leader is the one who challenges our preconceived perceptions. These leaders are often willing to "go against the grain." They challenge what we want to do and what we already believe. They ask whether there might not be another, maybe even a better, way. In my lifetime, one of the best of this type of leader was former President Jimmy Carter. Carter was a one-term President; he often seemed to reject expedience in favor of what was right. Yes, he was naïve and made mistakes, but they were honest ones, unlike the more calculated errors of some who followed him. But we didn't recognize the man's greatness until he became a former President. It was only then that we recognized his character as he revolutionized the transition from one presidency to the next and completely changed what it meant to be a former President. His leadership skills and his desire to do what was right made him an excellent statesman. And yet, we still found that in his presence, our preconceived notions continued to be challenged.

Asa was that kind of a leader. He refused to go along with the people's desires or expectations. The author of Kings says that his "heart was fully committed to the Lord all his life." He began the process of restoring the nation to the one of which God had dreamed. But the author of Kings also says that "he did not remove the high places." Rather than being a failure of Asa, this was a failure of the people. The practice of personal worship of other gods in nature and at the high points of the terrain had become ingrained in the people's actions. Asa tore down the organized places of worship for these other religions, but to tear down the high places would have meant changing the hearts of the people. Asa was unable to do that, at least unable to do that to the extent that worship no longer took place at these "high places." But Asa did begin the process of challenging the hearts and desires of the people regarding the object of their worship. And for that reason, he is considered to be a good king.   

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 16

See Also 1 Kings 15:14

 

Dogs will eat those belonging to Baasha who die in the city, and birds will feed on those who die in the country.” – 1 Kings 16:4

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 17, 2026): 1 Kings 16

Auschwitz. Just the name conjures up images of the horrors of World War II. It was not the only camp that housed the Jews and enemies of Nazi Germany; many others existed, but it is often Auschwitz that lives in our nightmares. Or maybe more precisely, it is Auschwitz that lives in my nightmares.

The extermination program of Nazi Germany was a growth industry for Adolf Hitler. At first, it seems that the prisoners were likely just shot and placed into mass graves. Then the Nazis graduated to killing enemies of the state with carbon monoxide. But the gas was inefficient. And so more experiments were conducted, and finally the Nazi’s adopted the use of Zyklon B, a cyanide-based insecticide, to kill the Jews and political enemies of the Nazi Regime.

In the aftermath of these executions, there was a change in how the bodies were dealt with. At first, they were simply buried in mass graves, but the smell was bad. Lye was then added to the process, and then the bodies were burned just outside the concentration camp. However, at each stage, the terrible smell remained a significant obstacle. And so, the Nazi’s began to build crematoriums to burn the bodies and control the smell.  

However, the reality was that the Nazi’s didn’t see their enemies as people. They could do whatever they wanted to the bodies because they were subhuman. This wasn’t the first time the bodies of enemies have been treated this way, and it won’t be the last. One way we deal with people who oppose us is to make them seem less than human in our minds. They are criminals, evil, and violent; they are not like us, and so they don’t deserve the things that we have or the protections of the law that are given to proper members of society. And their bodies can be disposed of in any way that we see fit. They deserve less honor in their deaths than we would give to a beloved pet.

A prophecy is proclaimed over the house of Baasha. The house of Baasha was going to come to an end because of their sin. Because they had followed in the steps of Jeroboam, they would receive the same fate.  The prophecy over the house of Jeroboam had been that ^“Dogs will eat those belonging to Jeroboam who die in the city, and the birds will feed on those who die in the country. The Lord has spoken” (1 Kings 14:11)! And now, those same words have been spoken over the House of Baasha. We shouldn’t see this as a right or wrong moment, but rather as a description of how the people would react to the demise of the House of Baasha.

The House of Baasha would be destroyed so that no one would be around to take over the rule of the nation. And their bodies would not be given any honor in death. If they died in the city, their bodies would be left to the dogs; if they died in the country, then the birds would pick at them until there was nothing left, and maybe then the House of Baasha could be forgotten. But in all likelihood, they would continue to live in the nightmares of the people.   

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 15

 

Zerah the Cushite marched out against them with an army of thousands upon thousands and three hundred chariots, and came as far as Mareshah. – 2 Chronicles 14:9

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 16, 2026): 2 Chronicles 14

The movie “Red Dawn” was released on August 10, 1984. The film was set in the near future, when the United States was becoming increasingly isolated. NATO had been dissolved, and the United States decided to stand alone. At the same time, the Soviet Union was expanding its influence not only in Asia but also in the Americas. As a result, there is an active war between the Soviets and the Americans, and a Soviet led coalition has brought a European war to the United States for the first time in history. The fight is not contained to the coastlines of the United States; Soviet soldiers have infiltrated into the central states. In the movie, that infiltration occurs in a town called Calumet, Colorado.

The real Calumet, Colorado, is a ghost town. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Calumet was a small mining town, and it never grew large enough to have its own post office. Despite the small size of the village, the Calumet mine was Huerfano County’s leading producer of coal. However, the hamlet was permanently abandoned in the 1970s.

For the 1984 movie, Calumet is a thriving town, larger than the real town had ever been. And it is here that the Soviet coalition forces attack. In “Red Dawn,” it is a group of teens living in Calumet who decide to stand up against the invaders. The movie closes with a shot of a plaque taken after the end of a fictional World War III. The plaque read;

In the early days of World War III, guerrillas, mostly children, placed the names of their lost upon this rock. They fought here alone and gave up their lives, so that this nation shall not perish from the earth (Red Dawn, 1984).

In 1984, the movie didn’t seem all that far-fetched. President Ronald Reagan had branded the Soviet Union as “The Evil Empire.” We didn’t understand them, and they didn’t understand us. Many of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s remember the fear that was ever-present in our core because of this perceived enemy living on the other side of the world.

The Soviet Union is gone, but Russia and China remain the bogeymen of our day. And the real demise of NATO and the isolation of the United States seem even closer than they did in 1984.

Zerah the Cushite marches against Judah with a considerable army, probably twice the size of the 580,000 men that Asa had at his disposal. But more than just the size of Zerah’s army, the Cushites, likely originating from the area of modern-day Sudan, were seen as dangerous warriors. If “Red Dawn 900 B.C.E.” was filmed and Judah played the role of Calumet, Colorado, Zerah, and the Cushites would be appropriate stand-ins for the invading Soviet Army. Just the mention of the Cushites would have been enough to strike fear into the hearts of people everywhere. And fear was the hoped-for result of Zerah’s appearance in Asa’s Judah.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Kings 16

As for us, the LORD is our God, and we have not forsaken him. The priests who serve the LORD are sons of Aaron, and the Levites assist them. – 2 Chronicles 13:10

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 15, 2026): 2 Chronicles 13

On January 24, 2026, Alex Pretti became yet another person killed by a gun in the United States. He became the second person during the month of January 2026 to be killed by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The situation was a little different from the killing of Renee Good earlier in the month, but it was still a tragedy. My plea hasn’t changed from police instigated deaths in the past. I know it is your right to carry a gun, but please, don’t give law enforcement a reason to kill you. Leave your gun somewhere else. You might have the right to carry a gun, and as the story of Renee Good proved, you might get shot anyway, but while you have the right to carry, or the right to be snarky with law enforcement, in the end, you might still be dead. You will be in the right, but you won’t be alive to celebrate the correctness of your position. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is our shared reality. The world needs you! Please, stay safe.

The day after Alex Pretti’s death, many important or semi-important people came out on X with comments and condolences. One of those semi-important people was former President Bill Clinton. Clinton wrote;

Over the course of a lifetime, we face only a few moments where the decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our history for years to come. This is one of them. If we give our freedoms away after 250 years, we might never get them back (President Bill Clinton, January 25, 2026).

I have friends on both sides of this issue. And I have been blunt in the past; I do not agree with many of the President's actions. Prior to his first term, I was one of those “idiots” who believed that if Mr. Trump became President, after his second term, there was a good chance that meaningful elections would end in the United States. The big American experiment, democracy, would come to an end. I am not as sure about that prediction now, partially because of Donald Trump’s health. However, freedoms are being eroded, and I do worry about the liberties future Presidents might take. The example has been set, and it might be impossible for future leaders, Republican and Democratic alike, to resist the temptation to remove more of those freedoms.

Not everyone agrees with me, and I get that; I am not offended. One of my core beliefs is that we need to get along with each other. My hope is that we will seriously evaluate the freedoms we are losing and have the courage to stand up at some point and say, "Enough is enough."

Abijah speaks to his northern neighbors, the Israelites, about one of their decisions. He was concerned that the role of the Levites had been wiped away. According to the Law given to Moses, the Levites were supposed to oversee the nation's religious life. In Judah, Abijah’s nation, that was still the law of the land. The Levites still cared for the Temple, and the descendants of Aaron still served as the nation’s priests, as God had intended for both Judah and Israel. However, Jeroboam had changed that in Israel. Abijah wanted to remind Israel of the way they had drifted away from the Law of Moses.  They could make the change back, but they would need to demand that change. Israel had become used to the new way of doing things, and they would never return to the way it should have been. Because sometimes, the journey back is just too hard. What we give away may never be returned.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 14

 

In the eighteenth year of the reign of Jeroboam son of Nebat, Abijah became king of Judah. – 1 Kings 15:1

Today's Scripture Reading (February 14, 2026): 1 Kings 15

Do you know what happened on October 12, 1582? My mother's birthday is October 12, which is just a random fact, but she wasn't alive in 1582 (maybe an unnecessary statement of the obvious). The answer to what happened on October 12, 1582, throughout our entire planet is nothing. No one was born, no one died, no wars were fought, no scientific advancements were made, and nobody even woke up in the morning or went to bed at night on that day in 1582. In fact, October 12, 1582, was near the end of the most boring ten days in history. Why? Because the days from October 5 to 14, 1582, don't actually exist. People went to bed on Thursday, October 4, 1582, and woke up on Friday, October 15, 1582. In an effort to correct the shift that had happened in our calendar, those days simply disappeared as we moved from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar. The problem was that when measured against solar events, there had been some significant drift. The shortest day of the year was no longer December 21; now, it was December 11. And unless something were done, that date would continue to drift until our seasons were all messed up. So, they did two things. First, they changed the way that we counted leap years. Instead of celebrating a leap year every four years, they eliminated three leap years every four hundred years. So, according to the new rule, any year divisible by 100 is not a leap year unless it is also divisible by 400. According to that rule, the year 2000 was a leap year, but the years 2100, 2200, and 2300 won't be. The second thing they did was make the jump from Thursday, October 4, 1582, to Friday, October 15, 1582. The days in between don't exist; they never happened.

We made another, maybe less significant, change more recently when we moved from the notation AD (Anno Domini) to CE (Common Era or what we in the church sometimes call the Christian Era). Nothing has changed regarding the dates on our calendars, although I still have friends who request AD whenever I give a date in CE notation because they say the new notation confuses them. But nothing more than a change in notation occurred; the dates remained the same.

Chronicles focuses on the reigns of the Judean Kings. The only mention of the Kings of Israel in the north is to give us some idea of the era in which they ruled. So, the author of Chronicles tells us that the reign of Abijah began eighteen years into Jeroboam's reign in the north. Dates were not coordinated in any way. Usually, they were just counted from some national event. The Bible often dates the reigns of the Kings in the South according to those in the north. And for the Kings in the north, the reverse is usually true; they are dated by the reigns of the Kings of the South. So even though they were often adversaries, the two Kingdoms remained intimately tied together.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 13

See Also 2 Chronicles 13:1

In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. – 1 Kings 14:25

Today's Scripture Reading (February 13, 2026): 1 Kings 14

During the early days of World War II, several governments existed in exile, often setting up their administrations in far-flung places such as Australia, London, or even Washington, D.C. Their homelands might have been occupied, but these governments never gave up hope of regaining control of their native countries. Free France, headquartered in London, might be one of the best-known of these nations, but Free France was only the tip of the Iceberg.

One of the least remembered governments in exile was that of Belgium. King Leopold III tried to keep Belgium neutral during the war, but it proved futile. Germany invaded Belgium in May of 1940, and King Leopold, believing that his country did not have the strength to resist, opened up the gates of the nation to the Germans, surrendering the nation to their control. It was a move that earned him hostility from the Belgian people, while the government was forced to flee Belgium and set up a government-in-exile in Bordeaux, in the Southwestern part of France. And when France fell, the Belgian government moved to London. As for King Leopold III, the monarch stayed in Belgium as a guest of the Germans. After the war, Leopold was an unwelcome presence in the nation he once ruled and was seen as a Nazi sympathizer. Leopold fled Belgium, and when he finally returned in 1950, his presence almost sparked a civil war.

Jeroboam was an official in King Solomon's government responsible for managing the Northern workforce in many of Solomon's building projects. And in this position, he was a first-hand witness to the discontent of the Northern tribes that marked Solomon's time on the throne. Jeroboam began exploring how he could become King of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. It didn't take long for Solomon to become aware of a possible rebellion brewing within his ranks and Jeroboam's connection with the rebels. And so, Jeroboam ran to Egypt and enjoyed the hospitality of Shishak, the King of Egypt, usually identified as the Pharaoh Shoshenq.

Jeroboam would remain in Egypt for the rest of Solomon's life, only daring to return to Israel after Solomon's death. He had no appetite to take on Solomon in a civil war. But his son, Rehoboam, was a different matter. Now the nation was ripe for a civil war. While in Egypt, Jeroboam essentially set up a government in exile. He made friends and allies who would support him when the time came to fight back home.

At first, a civil war between Israel and Judah was avoided. However, in the fifth year of the reign of Rehoboam, Shishak attacked from the south, bringing with him other friends whom Jeroboam had made during his period of exile. We really don't know whether they were attacking because of the relationship that Jeroboam had built with them during his time of exile, or just picking on a nation at a moment of weakness. What we do know is that Rehoboam had been successfully isolated, and this was a war that Judah's King wasn't going to win. Rehoboam seemed to understand what was happening, and he reinforced the cities on the nation's southern and western borders in anticipation of an attack from Egypt. Still, the Book of Chronicles argues that because of Rehoboam's unfaithfulness, that action was not enough to save the nation.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 1 Kings 15

See Also 2 Chronicles 12:2