THE END IS NOT THE END (2 CHRONICLES 36)

 Today's passage took me through the closing chapters of 2 Chronicles, through King Josiah (one of my favorite kings) to his son and grandsons (all evil) to the exile to Babylon.  The end had been decreed during King Josiah's reign (he changed the fate of his nation during his  life time, one of the reasons he's my hero.)

But God . . .didn't let it end there.

Thank God for the "But God"s in our lives!

God moved the heart of a pagan king to fulfill His promise. He attributed his success to the "God of the heavens" and reversed the exile.  God. . .has also assigned me to build him a Temple of worship at Jerusalem in Judah. All who belong to God's people are urged to return--and may your God be with you! Move forward!  (2 Chronicles 36:22-23) 

God may use an unexpected means to relay His plans. 
God may move at an unexpected time.
God won't always move when we would like him to. 

But when God makes a promise, we can be certain it will happen!

With God, the end is just the beginning of the next chapter. 

A GOD FAR AWAY (2 Kings 25)

Judah went into exile, orphaned from her land. (2 Kings 25)

Orphan: deprived of such protection or advantage

This is one of those interesting little verses.

Judah went into exile. Judah is the subject, being forcibly removedfrom her native country. So this means the people of Judah, not the land inside its borders.

Orphaned from her land. We associate orphan with the loss of parents; but for the people of Judah, separation from the land was worse than losing a parent.

In a time and culture connected "God" with their land, leaving their homes almost felt like leaving God.  No wonder God told Jeremiah (who was among the people left in Jerusalem) reminded them, "Am I only a God nearby, and not a God far away?" (P,S. That's a nugget from a study I did on the questions that God asks us. Look at them some time.)

They had left their God. . .or so some of them felt.

They had left the land promised to them by God. Those who didn't believe they left God might have felt God had left them.

Whatever protection or advantage that Judah had from living in the country where God had chosen to dwell. . . gone. Stripped. They had seen God perform miracles over and over again, but none of Josiah's descendants had the same faith he did, to stall exile for a few more years. They had filed their final appeal, and the court had ruled against them.

You know, come to think of it, I could feel "orphaned" here in the nursing home. It certainly isn't my promised land.

But instead, this space has become a place of blessing for me. Abundant, packed down and flowing over. (in between bouts of pain and allergies, that is. or in spite of.)

And Babylon became like that for Judah, as well. The end of 2 Kings (chapter 25) reports that Jehoichin, Judah's final king, was released from prison and was given a higher place of honor in exile.

God is indeed a God far away, the one true God whom the exiles learned to obey in meticulous detail. (all 613 rules)

BETTER THAN DAVID!

In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea son of Elah became king of Israel. He ruled in Samaria for nine years. As far as God was concerned, he lived a bad life, but not nearly as bad as the kings who had preceded him. (2 Kings 17:1-2, MSG)

Hezekiah put his whole trust in the God of Israel. there was no king quite like him, either before or after. He held fast to God--never loosened his grip--and obeyed to the letter everything God had commanded Moses. And God, for his part, held fast to him through all his adventures. (2 Kings 18:5-6, MSG)

The two kings I've quoted above are unusual in all the records of the kings of Israel and Judah. Can you guess what it is?

Hmm. Hoshea had the misfortune of ruling Israel at the time her sins came home and she was taken into exile in Assyria. I say "misfortune." This record suggests Hoshea wasn't bad, as far as Israel's kings went. He is one of the few (the only one?) who wasn't compared to Jeroboam I, the king who set Israel on the path to sin. If God graded on a curve, instead of pass/fail, Hoshea might have managed a C.

On the other side, Hezekiah was compared to David favorably. The author goes so far as to say, "There was NO KING quite like him."  Not even David! Hezekiah also took the final step that the earlier "good" kings had failed to do: he smashed the altars to Baal and the Asherah poles.

Of David and Hezekiah, I think Hezekiah had the harder job at following God's laws. Imagine Americans trying to go back to 1776 and living by the laws and cultural mores of the times.

Of course, he might have relied on the wisdom of the priests to understand what the laws looked like in his time, much as we have the Supreme Court to help us interpret the Constitution.

Still--he was a traditionalist bucking the trend. I'm sure people opposed his reforms.

I'm a person who will rarely rate anything a 10 (or a 1).  I'm not comfortable with extremes.  But look at the extremes used to describe Hezekiah:

• He put his WHOLE trust in the Lord. 
• He NEVER loosened his grip on God.
• He obeyed EVERYTHING God commanded Moses

(By the way, I doubt he was that perfect, but he would have received an A+ on a curve.)

Instead of bemoaning the state of the nation in his day, Hezekiah set about changing it. Of course, he was king. He wielded influence we can only imagine. 

But . . . we can't let the daunting task before us keep us from attempting the impossibly difficult. Like Hezekiah, we have the same responses available to us. We can trust God, we can hold on to God, and we can do His will. 

And the rest, as they say, is history.

IT CAN ALWAYS GET WORSE (2 Kings 14)

God was fully aware of the trouble in Israel, its bitterly hard times. No one was exempt, whether slave or citizen, and no hope of help anywhere was in sight. But God wasn’t yet ready to blot out the name of Israel from history, so he used Jeroboam son of Jehoash to save them. (2 Kings 26-27, MSG)

When I first lost my daughter to suicide, I felt like nothing could be worse. And so I began a game of thinking of situations which could be worse . . .

She disappeared and we never knew what happened

She was murdered and the murderer was never caught

Those two situations struck me as even worse ways to lose my daughter.

Of course, that kind of thinking didn't alter my pain and grief. 

That's the way this verse about the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel strikes me. The writer describes the current situation as "bitterly hard times." The disaster spared no strata of society, from the lowest slave to the wealthiest landowner. Even worse, they had no hope of things getting better. 

If they followed my line of thinking, as bad as things were, the only thing that could be worse would be total defeat and rule by another country. 

Yes, things can always be worse. 

What I find oddly comforting is the thought that even if this abismal situation, when the Israelites saw no hope, God showed them mercy. Instead of allowing the "even worse" to happen, he used a wicked king (Jeroboam II wasn't any better than Jeroboam I) to deliver them.

I take great comfort in the knowledge God will not blot out my name from the Book of Life. I belong to him today, tomorrow, and always. That even in my current circumstances, God measures the amount of grief I bear and surrounds me with hedges of protection. 

Interesting that this blog post should come up on the day before Mother's Day. My son will probably spend the day with his wife and her mother. I have come to accept it. But Mother's Day has become a holiday I would rather ignore. I've lost my mother and my daughter, our three-stranded cord that worshipped and celebrated together. Without them, I feel naked. 

Even on mother's Day--God fences me inside His green pasture and gives me cool water for my soul.