365 Reflections

2 Samuel 11:25–27 (ESV) David said to the messenger, “Thus shall you say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter displease you, for the sword devours now one and now another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it.’ And encourage him.” 26 When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. 27 And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord . The passage above is David's response to the fact that Uriah has been killed during a battle where David's men first set him up to die and then proceeded to lose the fight. Rather than David getting upset with the tragedy suffered for his men, his response is one of casual indifference. In fact, he's relieved. His "problem" of Uriah is taken care of and he feels safe to hide in sin. Such is the price one pays when sin takes root in their life. Fi...

The book of Judges was hard to cover. It's not a happy end for the once promising Nation of Israel as they slowly descend to the very level of the pagan nations God called them to drive out. The last two stories of Judges shows both the religious pluralism and vicious nature of a nation no longer united around the Lord. So we come to the book of Ruth and it's more bad news: Ruth 1:1 (ESV)  In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. More than the famine in the land, there's the move of Elimelech to the land of Moab. Moab was the nation descended from Lot's incestuous relationship with his daughter. Further, the people were to live in the land on God's blessing for obedience. The famine points to the results of Israel's faithlessness and Elimelech's move is predicated on the national demise happening around him. Interestingly ...

Deuteronomy 4:25–31 (ESV)   “When you father children and children’s children, and have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke him to anger, 26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed. 27 And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. 28 And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. 29 But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30 When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you wil...