Psalm
28:9
Oh,
save your people and bless your heritage!
Be
their shepherd and carry them forever.
Genesis
26:4-5
“...And
in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because
Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and
my laws."
Well,
we see Isaac has heard his father’s stories...and chooses to try the same
tactic; ‘she is my sister’. Sigh. God has just finished making Isaac a promise
(see above verses 4-5) and what does he go and do the next thing? He goes to
Abimelech and says “she is my sister.” In Abraham’s case it was ‘true’ in Isaac’s
case it wasn’t even that, it was just, well, wrong. But, it does seem to have highlighted,
for the King that Isaac was favored and blessed of the Lord, who sends Isaac
and his company away in peace. Now, there does seem to have been some
contention for a while but in the end we see through theses verses below and
following that King Abimelech comes to an accord with Isaac and his company.
Then
they dug another well, and they quarreled over that also, so he called its name
Sitnah. And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel
over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, saying, "For now the Lord has
made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land." (Verses 21-22)
BUT,
the last verse we read today in Genesis says that Esau and his new wife make
life “bitter” for Rebekah and Isaac. (Not that we didn’t see that coming, what
with Esau probably having a severe case of buyer’s remorse after giving away
all his rights for a bowl of soup.)
Today
in 2 Chronicles 2 we read of the beginning of the building of the Temple. And this
is a very large undertaking and we will be reading about it for a while. I
couldn’t help but think about these last verses today:
Then
Solomon counted all the resident aliens who were in the land of Israel, after
the census of them that David his father had taken, and there were found
153,600. Seventy thousand of them he assigned to bear burdens, 80,000 to quarry
in the hill country, and 3,600 as overseers to make the people work. (Verses 17-18)
This
concept that ‘resident aliens’ were hanging around ready to be assigned to the
task of the king. Our countries today have differing understandings of what it
means to be a resident alien, and of course what rights or responsibilities we
may have to our harboring governments...What about us, though? Aren’t we
resident aliens if we recognize that our sojourn here in this life is but a
temporary time? Should we then, be about the business of preparing ourselves
for our homecoming? Do you suppose that might mean helping in rebuilding the “Temple”?
Well, I was just wondering, that’s all.
Luke
19:37-38
As
[Jesus] was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole
multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice
for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, "Blessed is the King
who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the
highest!"
That
follows along with the question I had from 2nd Chronicles; are we
ready with our voices to sing the Lord’s praises for all the wondrous works we
have seen? And just a little bit farther we read what Jesus says about building
this temple; "It is written,
"My house shall be a house of prayer," but you have made it a den of
robbers." (Verse 46)
For
me today, I should be about prayer. You?
Today’s
readings: Psalm 28, Genesis 26, 2 Chronicles 2, Luke 19:28-46
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