Deep Calls

Elisha was old when he died. I suppose we could do the math, but he was anointed as a prophet sometime during the reign of Ahab, (? years), then there was Ahaziah    (2 years), then Joram (12 years), then Jehu (28 years), then Jehoahaz (17 years), then he died sometime during the reign of Jehoash. That makes 60+ year of ministry -- say he was 25 or 30 (could have been) when he was anointed by Elijah = 85 to 90+ years old when he died. And my favorite favorite favorite OT story is the few short verses about what happened after he died. I KNOW! I do say "favorite" a lot with Elisha...but all the stories about him are really great and I really love them. His miracles are crazy and sometimes funny and wild and unexpected. He is saturately anointed. But the best / craziest / funny / bizarre / wild/ unexpected/you have got to be KIDDING me! story of them all!!!   is what happened after he died.  It is breath-taking, if you stop as you read it to th...

I sit, as I write this . . . OK, type this, I don't write in the strictest sense of the word, I guess . . . and munch on toasted rosemary-garlic bread. It is different today than it was 2 days ago, when it came fresh baked from the oven, when the warmth from the baking caused the butter to melt and soak in, igniting the garlic and rosemary oils anew. OH! That first bite, when the kitchen still smells like fresh baking bread ~ all yeasty-enticing.  "YUM" -- seriously does not cover it! But I like it all over again, now days later when I cut thick slices, toast it and butter it and eat it with fresh coffee.  As much as I enjoyed it ~ it is gone now, the bites lasted as long as those sentences above ~ I just wanted it. When I made it I wasn't hungry. I just wanted something to go with my coffee. They are different: hungry and want. It made me think about "hungry". Hungry is kind of fierce. It drives. There is agitation to it. When I think of 'hungry...

How does GOD win a war? 2 Kings 6:24 - 7:20 Do you want suspense? It's in there.    Do you want tragedy?  It's in there. Do you want drama?  It's in there.    Do you want mystery?  It's in there. Do you want intensity?  It's in there.   Do you want special effects? It's in there.     Do you want comedy?  It's in there. Do you want justice?  It's in there?    Do you want good story?  It's in there. Do you want characters? It's in there.  2 Kings 6:24 reads: Some time later , Ben-Hadad king of Aram mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria. "Some time later . . . ? After the last story, he doesn't seem clever to me...but at any rate ~ Ben-Hadad lays siege to Samaria, and it was a very effective siege. Slowly the supplies run out and there is such extreme poverty and starvation that two women decide to eat their own children. The horror of it is more t...

2 Kings 6:8-23 Really!!   This is a story worth reading! When I read it, in my imagination, I see men -- old men who are old friends -- surrounded by their neighbors and their now grown sons and their grandchildren. It is late in the evening, after dinner and as they sit around the fire, wine in hand, they are reminiscing about a time they shared -- the retelling is a mix of heads shaken in awe, in wonder -- and loud guffaws, the kind of laughter where you can't quite breathe for a minute, where tears course down your cheeks. The story is punctuated by shouts of "NO!" followed by eruptions of hilarity, then by whispers of "no" exhaled in awe. This story is so shocking and odd -- it is like God deciding to have a good laugh while he deals with Aram ... AND with Israel.  So the story and my take on it : OK -- Aram is at war with Israel and sends the army to attack. But ~ EVERY TIME Elisha goes to the king of Israel (Jotham, though he was not named) and tel...

Chapter 6 of 2 Kings begins with a little tiny story. It is tucked in between the story of an important general from the ENEMY getting healed of leprosy and battles between Aram and Israel and all the attendant cool miracles. It is about a man and his neighbor's ax.  The event, while incidental, is shocking and huge. It must have been a miracle remembered and retold in awe filled voices around tables at night after dinner when all the "do you remember when" stories are bandied about. The "who" is missing entirely -- we do not know any names ... except of course Elisha's. There is no national consequence, no pithy moral beyond 'be careful with things you've borrowed'. It is a story of kindness -- and wonder. So some of the sons of the prophets want a new place to live. People marry, have children. Soon you need a bigger place. The men decide on a building project and ask Elisha to come along and he does ( good thing! ) While they are building...

( You can read the story : 2 Kings 5:19-27 ) - - - - - " But that wasn't the end of the story, was it, Uncle Gehazi? " " No, Sweet." said Gehazi absent-mindedly scratching at his arm. He sat heavily in the chair next to his niece Hadassah. "No, not for me." "You went after Naaman, right? Why? I have always wondered." "I have no good reason to tell you. It was stupid -- I suppose . . . greed, plain and simple. And I learned my lesson  --  too late -- but I learned!" "Can you tell me the story?" "Ah!" Gehazi chuckled ruefully, and poured a glass of wine. He sat and stared out the window a long while, his eyes looking down the road into the past. "It galled me -- Naaman and all his men so finely dressed, bearing wealth untold. The silver is what caught my eye ~ and my heart, I think. The sun hit it as Naaman laid it out before Elisha. I remember my breath caught. When he brought out the silver and...

Naaman? At the wedding supper? But, you say, he was a general in the army of Aram ~ the enemy! Yeah! OK...this is ~ as the title told you ~ a story of evangelism and conversion. The story is in 2 Kings chapter 5...go ahead. Go read it  ~ I'll wait. (silent musical interlude while you read) Done?  Good! OK... Evangelism : I am going to digress for just a bit to consider that word. It actually comes from two Greek words -- 'eu'   which is a prefix meaning true or genuine , and 'angelos'   which means messenger. Add the 'ism' to those parts and you get 'the delivery of a true or genuine message' . Now, of course, the usage and context for this word is predominantly Christianity and refers to leading people to a saving relationship with Jesus by delivering to them THE true message of the gospel (which means, by the way, "good new") Now most of you are likely saying, "yeah duh! We know  that!" But I wanted to emphasize the wo...

Did I mention Elisha traveled? Yeah! At the beginning of the next story, Elisha has moved down to Gilgal. Funny, lots of maps do not even show Gilgal...one I checked even put a question mark by where it showed Gilgal ~ as if to say, 'even we, the map makers,  are not sure this is where Gilgal was." The maps where I did find it, show it to be a city about 4 miles or so just north/west of Jericho. It is about 60 miles south/east of Shunem, and maybe 90 or so miles from Mount Carmel. Elisha got around! The story says he was there to meet with the company of the prophet. So...there were lots of places where there were 'companies of prophets' ... in Israel! I don't know...I just like that. In this country where the king and the people are totally GIVEN to idol worship, all over the place there are these communities of prophets. Hmm! The beginning of this story notes that there was a famine in the land. That fact figures into the story. Elisha comes to meet with the c...

Here is the story -- you can (and of course, you should) read it for yourself in 2 Kings 4:8- 37 . This is such a vivid story -- so full of reality and wonder and fierce emotion and determination . . . and surprise. I think, if casting parts, I would still give the part of Elisha to Russel Crowe. For Gehazi, maybe Jason Statham. . .after all he would have to be able to hang with Elisha, and he would have to be someone that Elisha  (and when I say 'Elisha' in your mind's eye see Russel Crowe) would take seriously. For the Shunemite woman, maybe Sandra Bullock. She was younger than her husband, but not an airhead socialite ~ someone with strength and grit. Elisha traveled. I think before I began writing about him -- here in this blog -- that I didn't quite realize how much. We saw ( 2 Kings chapter 3 ) Elisha down at the southern end of Judah or perhaps up into Edom. Now he is in Israel in a city called Shunem. At a rough guess-tament, Shunem is about 4 miles north o...

I know you can't tell, cuz I have not been writing every day. It may seem like I have been dragging my feet about getting to this next section of the "Destroyed Cloak" series. But ~ NO! This is my favorite ... OK, with the notably exception of Jesus dying and being resurrected OF COURSE ... but other than that this is my favorite part of the WHOLE Bible. It is not my favorite for the theology. It is not my favorite for the literary excellence. It is my favorite because the miracles are so wild, and crazy and 'miracle-y'. In an earlier post I mentioned C. S. Lewis' concept that there are "miracles of the OLD creation, and miracles of the NEW creation." For example -- a miracle of the OLD creation would be when Jesus turned water into wine. Lewis notes that water is turned into wine every day : it is called fermentation. Jesus, as LORD of creation simply skipped the middle steps. A miracle of the NEW creation would be when Jesus after he had been resur...