Deep Calls

This was written over 3 years ago... sweet memories! Well  ~  really, my adorable wonderful too cute for words -- really you wouldn't believe how cute if you haven't met him -- grandson came for a visit. We were "babysitting" ... well that is what my daughter and her husband think. Really he just came to play. We love it when he comes to play. I think my favorite moments were when Seth, his Uncle Dan and I were dancing around the living room to "Rockin Robin" ... Seth's face was priceless! See, I am smiling AGAIN just thinking about it. If you don't have grandchildren...I totally recommend them. It is a bit of an investment: you get married to someone you want to spend a lifetime with, you have children, love and enjoy them through all the stages from "OH! I think I am pregnant" to "when did you get taller than I am" to "yes, you SHOULD marry that wonderful person" to "OH you are pregnant??!!!??". It does,...

Breaking stride -- interruptions -- pauses It is amazing to me how when I write daily, I can write so much more easily. I find the insights and thoughts tapping me on the shoulder throughout the day. I find as I do all those "mindless" tasks ~ dishes, sweeping floors, wiping counters, straightening, folding laundry ~ that what I will write, or at least what I will write about, clicks together like pieces of a puzzle : frames of thinking, colors of a theme matching colors of a theme. But, when I break stride, when interruptions, major and/or minor, pauses in routine occur ~ wow! It is like when you have a laptop and you are busily writing away and "CLICK" the battery dies and the screen goes blank. That is how I feel. Blank screen. I was interrupted by a season of flu in the family, then a trip to CO, then a final flu slap in the face. In the face of those distractions, I just never made it to my computer to write. I woke yesterday thinking, "Today! Today ...

Well, if Elisha's first recorded miracle on the west side of the Jordan was ... crazy/unexpected, the second one is definitely shocking! 2 Kings 2:23-25 One day Elisha was was in Bethel. . . Bethel -- Bethel was, we remember, the place where Jeroboam had set up one of the golden calves to keep his people from going to Jerusalem to worship YHWH. So we cannot expect this is a hub of goodness and righteousness. But we see also, from verse 2 of 2 Kings 2, that Bethel was also the location of one of the schools of the prophets. Hmmmmm! So Elisha goes out for a walk and a group of young men...probably the rowdy teens of the city...come out and begin to mock and ridicule him. They call him "baldy".  He turns and looks at them, and calls down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Wow! And...two bears come out of the woods and maul 42 of these young men. WHAT?? This story I think, hits most people's 'politally correct' sensibility buttons and alarms be...

The Elisha stories If I could bring myself to have favorites, I think these stories might rank in the top 5 of my favorites for stories in the Bible. Favorites are hard for me. I find often that my "favorite" is what ever I am reading or meditating on. That being said, I return again and again to these great, crazy, unexpected, shocking stories and every time I read them I think : THESE are my favorite stories! So maybe they really are. Have you read them? I do hope you took the time. I have this theory: I think that when we get to heaven and are at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6-9) that I will have time to sit over a pot of perfect (probably Earl Grey) tea and yummy snacks, and chat with some of my favorite people who were born long before I was -- people I would love to get to know. My list includes people like C. S. Lewis, and of course, Tolkien, George McDonald -- people like that. I of course want time to chat with Elisha. I would love to ask him hi...

Miracles. They are shocking, and unexpected and expected, and hoped for and needed and useful, and wonderful and wonder full, and believed and belief causing, and disbelieved and discounted. There is a delightful book by C. S. Lewis called Miracles. If you have not read it, you should. . .as soon as possible. . .start it today, if you can. It is that good, as far as I am concerned. In this book Lewis takes the subject of miracles and analyzes it as a master of logic would -- not exactly theologically, but definitely logically. The first time I read the book (and yes, that means I have re-read it many times) I was in college and miracles were a topic to me -- that is, I had no current-life experiences of the miraculous. I knew they were in the Bible -- and I believed what I read happened as the Bible said it happened. As I read Miracles , I found myself thinking "of course : miracles", as I might think "of course : sunshine" -- even on a rainy day. The last three c...

Jehu He is king now. Jehu got a profound and very directive word from God, was soaked in perfumed anointing oil, supported my his fellow commanders in the army; he killed the standing king of Israel, Joram (and the king of Judah, to boot) and then killed the queen-mother, Jezebel. Not bad for a day's work. Now ... on to solidify his standing as king. The kind of risks we will take, and the way we approach those risks speaks volumes about us. One of the things I love about Jehu... ... and I must admit, Jehu is one of my favorite kings ~ certainly my favorite king  (ok, the only one I actually like) in Israel. But if I made a list of all the kings, from Israel and from Judah: from David to Zedekiah, then Jehu would be on that list -- not at the top, but up there... . . . so one of the things I love about Jehu is the way he approaches his decisions, and the cleverness with which he carries them out. There is a word in Hebrew : `aaruwm. It means subtle, wily, crafty...

Then Jehu went to Jezreel. When Jezebel heard about it, she painted her eyes, arranged her hair and looked out of a window. 2 Kings 9:30 Jezebel...who would you cast to play her part, in this scene ~ her last? She is older now...perhaps middle aged or older, depending on how old she was when she married Ahab. OK, math again: Ahab reigned 22 years; Ahazaiah, his son, reigned 2 years; and Joram, Ahab's other son (the one Jehu had just speared out in Naboth's vineyard) had reigned 12 years. Say she was 14 or 15 when they got married --then that was a marriageable age -- and it seems that Ahab married her soon after he became king, so you add 36 years and come to around 40. So ~ to give latitude +/or/-  ~ Jezebel is 35 to 45 years old. It would not have been a 'young' 40. No plastic surgery or personal trainers in that day. But she was a queen who clearly prized her looks...the FIRST thing she does when she gets the news about Jehu is put on make-up and do her hair. My ...

OK, remember our game : "Cast the Characters" ?  Well in the role of Jehu, I can see really only two possible choices. First of all, it could be Mel Gibson. Kind of like the Mel of Braveheart but more like the Mel of the Lethal Weapon series : a really good guy who is a bad boy, wild and reckless, ruthless and fierce against the bad guys and a smart aleck to boot. That could work. But, I must admit, that the image that snaps into my mind when ever I read the story of Jehu is Bruce Willis from the Die Hard movies. He is a "been-there/done-that...and that and that and that" kind of guy. He too is a smart-mouth. There isn't a weapon he doesn't like. He is likable ... like a doberman pincer when it is your pet . . . but it is best that you remember it is a doberman. So take your time, get your Bible and read 2 Kings 9 and 10. Be warned...the movie, when Peter Jackson decides to make it, will have to be rated R for extreme violence. Again...I'll wait. ...

How good and pleasant it is   when brothers live together in unity   It is like precious oil poured on the head   running down on the beard down upon the collar of his robes Psalm 133:1-2 Rewind the tape. The last blog looked at the Elijah and Elisha relationship. But just before that...yeah, turn back to that: Elijah at Mt. Horeb. God gave Elijah 3 last tasks. He completed one: anoint your replacement. And ... as we saw ... it wasn't like he didn't have enough time. From the point where Elijah skyped with God at Horeb to when the Elijah caught the rapture test flight was somewhere between 5 and 8 years. Elijah didn't disregard God's instructions ~ he delegated. The first of the tasks left in Elisha's inbox -- anoint Hazael as king over Aram -- is intriguing to me mainly for its shock value. Aram was NOT one of the nations that acknowledged YHWH as God. Having a prophet from Israel come to anoint a king in Aram was not only politically shocking -- imagine...

Elijah and Elisha -- scripture seems to record such an odd, brusque relationship:   ~ Elijah 'throws his cloak' over Elisha when he calls him to come to      be his replacement, and then says, "Go home"   ~ Elijah is leaving -- forever --   and he makes Elisha chase him      from city to city always saying, "stay here" OK...that is a rough paraphrased summary, but really there isn't much more to summarize. It always felt to me like in ... oh ... about 2 weeks time Elijah leaves Horeb, picks up Elisha, does the 'chase' scene from Gilgal to the other side of  the Jordan, and skips off to heaven leaving Elisha with an old cloak  ~ to kind of figure things out for himself. But in the scouring and re-reading I have come to a completely different conclusion. I like books. You may know that about me. I don't mind books that are just words, but the kid in me, I guess, still loves books that are illustrated well. ...

my brain feels too too full, crowded with mis-matched paraphernalia have you ever had a dinner party and then someone cleared an over-filled table to an already full kitchen counter, stacking haphazardly ~ bowls and plates and serving dishes stacked with silver ware...it feels kind of like that: Egypt has erupted and everyone seems to have an opinion, but NO ONE has an intelligent solution because it really is too full of complication and misery and anger -- justified anger and danger and corruption and fear and indignation and rage...and no one knows what will happen and Egypt matters, oh shock and amazement of all the media! Egypt matters...and that is why 'they' care. And I have a dear friend who is Egyptian and who has family there and that is his country and he is here and ... And what about the people    ? A very sweet lady who is strong and brilliant and powerful and feisty and full full full of life ~ had a heart attack. It is called 'broken heart syndrome...