Today’s Scripture Reading (August 10, 2019): 1 Chronicles 27
The story of
Godzilla is not our story; it is solely his tale, and we are just the observers.
In the world of Godzilla, we are not really part of the plot. We cannot affect
the outcome. It is for that reason that Godzilla has become the metaphor for a
lot of things in life that are out of our control. Godzilla is about the proliferation
of nuclear weapons, or maybe he embodies the idea of climate changes. Any
situation that seems beyond what we can control becomes our Godzilla. And the
world belongs not to us, but to whatever Godzilla reigns at this moment. We are
not the heroes of the story; he is the hero. We are the victims; we are the
innocent bystanders.
But I do not
want to live in Godzilla’s world. I am convinced that my first duty is to
decide that I will be the hero of my life story; I will not, under any
circumstances, play the role of the victim. Part of the reason that this is
ingrained so deeply inside of me is that as I look around me, I see victims.
They live all around us. The world dictates to them. They meet adversity and
give up. They give away the power to be happy to anyone who might be passing
by. I see this most prominently in the area of finances. We know that becoming
rich is simple, if not easy. Spend less than you make. Don’t let your desires
or the actions of someone else dictate what you do with your money. It doesn’t
matter how much you make, spend less. Do not go into debt. The one reality of
our culture is that too many people have credit card debt, and are paying exorbitant
interest, from which they will never recover. They do it to feed their own
desires, or to look good in the eyes of someone else. Debt has become their
Godzilla, and the only role that they have left to play is that of the victim.
Maybe we don’t know any better. But we should.
I love the short story of Benaiah. You can find it near the
end of 2 Samuel in the descriptions of David’s mighty men. These were
the men that were willing to walk with David and even to fight his battles. And
one name mentioned on that list is Benaiah, son of Jehoiada. The Chronicler
wants to make sure that his readers know that this Benaiah is the same person
that is mentioned among David’s mighty men. Among Benaiah’s exploits is a story
that he went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. If you have read
that passage before, you might have skipped right past the story. But when you
stop to think about it, maybe you begin to wonder who would do that? I am not
sure what I would do if I met a lion with nothing but a sword on a snowy day,
but chasing it down into a wet, snow-filled pit where my footing would be
questionable at best would definitely not be on my agenda. And yet that seems
to have been precisely what Benaiah had done. The text seems to indicate that
he did it voluntarily – that he may have even been the one who chased the lion
into the pit in the first place, and because of that act among others David
made him one of his mighty men. Any man that would willingly chase a lion into
a pit on a snowy day was dangerous – and David wanted the men close to him to
be just that – dangerous men to anyone that would stand in the path of the
king.
They were the
heroes of the story. Even a lion would not play the role of Godzilla in Benaiah’s
story. Benaiah was determined that he was going to play the role of Godzilla in
the life of the lion, even if that meant fighting the lion into a snow-filled
pit on a stormy day.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 15
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