Soil lover
As I read through the accounts of the kings in the Bible, Uzziah’s story doesn’t strike me as being overly unique. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, at least for a while. Eventually, his own power and pride did him in. He overstepped, and it cost him. He entered the…
Abandoning the Lord
As I read the annals of the kings of Israel in Chronicles, the length of the timeline gets lost on me. Only a few pages before I was reading the account of David, followed by a few pages for Solomon. Then Scripture starts flying through subsequent kings whose reigns are often summed up in a…
Grasping God’s glory
Sometimes I wish God would indisputably appear in some fantastically obvious way, eliminating my wrestling, struggling and doubt. Something like what happens in II Chronicles 7: “When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priests could…
A trickle of trust
The camping trip had a rough start. While packing to go we got a phone call with a heart-stopping estimate for our car repairs, the first of two vehicles needing work. We were definitely feeling the financial crunch. My wife received her last paycheque before the summer break, we had other bills due, and we…
Solomon’s splendour
History really is unfair to the common people. In a previous column (“Becoming the enemy you hate,” April 18, page 13), I noted that Solomon essentially enslaved 153,600 men in order to build God’s temple, emulating the oppressor Israel had once longed to be liberated from. One chapter later, in II Chronicles 3, the text…
An honest-to-God typo
Most of the time I can’t stand typos. They bug me. If I’m completely honest, I’m internally judgmental of people who don’t catch their typos, myself included. I love words, I love Wordle, I have a knack for spelling and, when I catch something spelled wrongly, I have a hard time looking past it and…
Becoming the enemy you hate
The story of Israel warns us of how easily we can become the very thing we hate. The Hebrews were slaves in Egypt, oppressed by Pharaoh and forced into slave labour to perpetuate the greatness of the kingdom. They suffered under oppression and longed to be freed from it. God heard their cry and set…
A blip in the family tree
As I read through long lists of descendants in the first chapters of First Chronicles, some names are familiar, like the sons of Jacob and other names I’ve encountered in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. Achar (also Achin in Joshua 7) gets a sentence of description, reminding us that he was the one “who brought trouble…
Wrestling with fairy-tale endings
Warning: Spoiler alert for Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns. I have a mental list of Disney movies I wish would end differently, movies that might actually pack a better punch if they didn’t have the fairy-tale ending where everything resolves perfectly with a pretty happily-ever-after bow on top. I don’t like how Mary Poppins Returns ends.…
Prayer and lasting
For a few years now, I have felt good about my slow but steady pace of reading reflectively through Scripture. It is a spiritual discipline I’ve moulded in a way that works for me. Prayer, however, is one that, although certainly not absent from my life, could use some work. I am not uncomfortable praying…
