Today's Scripture Reading (May 23, 2022): 1 Chronicles 15
The story of Charles
I of England (1600-1649) is a tragic tale. Charles seems to have been a tyrant
to the very core of being. He strongly believed that God had placed him on the
throne of England and that God ordained everything that he
did.
Much like the popes at the time, Charles thought that he was infallible and
that to oppose him was the same as opposing God.
And yet, there
were plenty of people who did oppose him. Charles presided over a devastating
civil war in England. Historians have maintained that Charles's civil war was one of the
bloodiest ever fought on English soil. Eventually, Charles was arrested and put
on trial for treason. But charging a King with treason was a novel and
interesting idea. In an era
when
the King and nation were often identified as one, the thought that it might
a
King could commit treason against the country had never before occurred to anyone. During
the trial, Charles was given several opportunities to own up to the errors of his reign, but he
steadfastly refused. He was the King, the head of the government, and Charles believed
that he was the author of all the authority to arrest and try
the people of England. Because of that, no power
in England could put him on trial. Charles
was above the law. And he
considered the trial itself to be an act against the God of the English Church.
But regardless of Charles's belief about his power and the
legitimacy of the charges against him, on January 30, 1649,
Charles I was executed in Whitehall, London, after being found guilty of treason. (The reigns of
Charles I and then his son, Charles II, which ended
with the King being deposed and replaced by a military government, make it unlikely that England's
heir apparent, Prince
Charles, will
ever reign as Charles III. Conventional wisdom argues that
he
will choose another regnal name.)
David had made
an error when trying to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. He
had sent soldiers to place the Ark on a wagon and have it
unceremoniously dragged back to David's capital. The
problem was that
that was not how God had instructed that the Ark was to be moved. He had declared
that his
Levites were responsible for carrying the Ark. And it
was to be carried and not dragged. Rings were placed on the side of the Ark, and a pole was to be
slipped through the rings so that it could be carried by
the Levites.
But it was not something of which David had thought to enquire the first time
that the Ark was moved.
And so, David
did something that seemed
very unpolitical and against what Kings would normally do. David admitted that
he was wrong, which was why Uzzah had died.
David knew something that Charles I and others seemed not to understand. He was a human
King,
and nothing he did was infallible. David was smart enough not to do the same
thing twice. This
time, he would get it right.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading:
2 Samuel 7
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