Today’s Scripture Reading (June 7,
2013): 2 Kings 6
One of the
basic truths of life is that if we walk west, we will end up somewhere west of our
starting position. It should not be a mystery, and yet it seems to be. One of
the comments that I hear from people is that they don’t seem to know how they
got to the place where they find themselves. And I want to scream at them, I
know how you got there – you walked. Every day you made decisions and steps
that slowly carried you from the place that you were to the place where you are
now. And you have showed up in my office to ask me to miraculously take you
back to the place where you used to be – and I can’t do that. The best that I
can do is to start you walking back to that former life point. But, if it took
you ten years to walk to this place, you can expect that it will take you a
while to get back. In life, each one of
us has the ability to shape what it is that our future will look like, but that
ability often lies in the small everyday choices of life (and not the huge, earth
shattering decisions that we pretend to make.) It is those choices that are
going to dictate the things that we will experience in the future.
Samaria is
under siege. The armies of Syria are sitting outside of the city walls, and,
not surprisingly, inside the city things are a little tense. Food has become
scarce, the people are frightened, the future is uncertain and life is now
being questioned. But none of this should have been unexpected. Israel had made
the small decisions that had carried them right to this point in their history.
And the king’s response was to threaten the life of Elisha, the prophet of God,
because he believes that God is ultimately responsible for the disaster now
taking place. It is a very common response. Instead of placing the blame on our
own shoulders – we blame God. King Jehoram has gone as far to pledge that on
this day he would separate Elisha’s head from his body – and he meant it quite
literally.
So as
Jehoram enters into Elisha’s Bible study and speaks these words – blaming God
for the disaster and proclaiming that there is no use of waiting any longer on
God – I am not exactly sure what it is that Jehoram is speaking about. It might
be that he means that there is no use waiting out the siege – it is time to
walk out to the Syrian army and surrender the city, depending on their grace,
or it might be that this is the moment to separate Elisha’s head from his body
(by the way, if you are wondering which I believe it is – I think it is the
first option, but I am not sure that he didn’t want Elisha to believe it was
the second.)
But the
truth of Jehoram’s situation was that in he had never really waited on God. He
had treated God as he would have treated any of his servants, commanding God to
do good things in his life without even thinking that there might be something
that God expected of him. Serious trouble should have left Jehoram with a
desire to really get in touch with God, but instead Jehoram simply wants to
give up. But the question that remained was that if he refused to wait on God,
what could he do? And that might be why, once more, he finds himself in the
presence of Elisha, not to kill him, but to simply hear what the man of God had
to say.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Kings
7
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