A bitter end to a promising beginning

With a sad heart, I closed my Bible. Over the past month, I had read the stories written in 1 & 2 Kings. I read the stories of Israel's greatest kings, David and Solomon. I saw Yahweh raise a nation of slaves with broken backs into a nation of wealthy and wise cultural elites. Jerusalem was a boom town of boom towns.

I saw unspeakable riches flow through the Holy City. I saw sailing ships sailing and traders trading. I saw a religiopolitical system that seemed to work, even though the monarchy was never Yahweh's ideal.

I saw a beautiful beginning. The covenant was honored. God smiled down on his people.

It was a rocky road, yes, but David was always a survivor. He sinned, but he repented. The author of 1 & 2 Kings never glosses over David's sins, but in history, but we also know that few have pleased the heart of Yahweh like David. No matter what new and astonishingly evil king took the throne, Yahweh remembered David. Eventually, the sins of Judah became so great that Yahweh's anger could not be stopped. Josiah was a great reformer, but he died from wounds sustained fighting Pharaoh Neco of Egypt.

Josiah will stand and say, someday, that from the House of Judah, one greater than the rest emerged. He is Jesus Christ. He is why I'm here, a Gentile in a foreign land, trying to wrap my mind around the story of God's chosen people.

Today, I feel God's call to remember the stories that have been told, to brush off the dust of antiquity and let them deal with me in a profound way. In the Books of 1 & 2 Kings, I see stories of love, family, redemption, anger, evil and hate.

The author spares us no details. We see mighty kings reduced to vassals, or worse-- palace dogs whom the Babylonian ruler took pity on and showed kindness to. Could David or Solomon ever have imagined such an end?

My pastor says, "Do not doubt in the light what God did in the darkness." In a culture of perpetual obsolescence, do we value the stories of old? Have we made the wisdom of the ancients, their lengthy genealogies and centuries of oral tradition, into a reference book?

In my tradition, I see this tendency. We are very good at living in the moment, and dreaming about the future, but we forget that nothing is new under the sun. That's the message of wisdom, and that's what 1 & 2 Kings speaks to me.

We must remember the ancient wisdom. We must not allow our heart to grow cold to the teachings of the fathers. No matter how scary it is, we must let these historical books work us over, through and through.

The message of 1 & 2 Kings is harsh, but still it holds hope for tomorrow. One thing that God showed me at my youth camp is that we can have a better future. Through our economy may fail, our strength must not.

As people of prayer, we must move God's heart so deeply and so purely that, if ever our church is reduced to evil and rubble, something in God's heart will remember our faithfulness. The system of temple worship may be corrupt and so far from its original intent, but God will raise up among us people of great faith, like Elijah and Elisha. He will uphold his promises, no matter what Joe Stupid or Tom Dumb is doing in positions of leadership.

God is no respecter of persons, but he does remember those who move his heart. If a thousand years is like a day to the Lord, we can imagine how the stories of the great men of our past still move the heart of the Lord.

I'm compelled to be that kind of person! I don't want anything this world has to offer me; I just want to please the Lord. It's time to live in that mode, that my life would be a sweet sacrifice to the Lord. Only then, can I rest.