Psalm
63:3-4
Because
your steadfast love is better than life,
my
lips will praise you.
So
I will bless you as long as I live;
in
your name I will lift up my hands.
Now
in our reading in Exodus we begin to see some of the miracles of God and parlor
tricks of Pharaoh's magicians...and I have to ask why would you work up a trick
that turned the river into blood? YUK! This leaves them with nothing to drink.
So, that’s not bad enough, they then get a plague of frogs. Frogs everywhere, in
every house and room and on the roads, and even as the magicians could conjure
up the frogs, they couldn’t get rid of them, so Pharaoh asks Moses and Aaron to
get rid of them with the promise to let the people go. When all the frogs are
dead in the land except for those in the river, the land stinks, but Pharaoh doesn’t
let the people go. Do we do this do you think? Do we, when we are in distress
make promises to God or to ourselves that we will stop something or do
something only to forget the promise once the distress has passed? In the end of today's reading in Exodus, the magicians are convinced that this is the "hand of God" but Pharaoh remains unconvinced.
Here
today we read of the death of Josiah in our 2 Chronicles passage. All along
he has been doing what the Lord said and following his word, but today he
decides he knows better and doesn’t listen and is killed. The reading ends with
the words that the people to this day lament his passing; for he had been a
just and upright king.
We
continue reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans today on the same topic he
was writing about yesterday, and that is our hearts – our intentions, matter to
God. Pretense is not the answer; to look good is not the same as acting according
to God’s law.
Today’s
readings: Psalm 63, Exodus 7:14-8:19, 2 Chronicles 35:20-27, Romans 2:17-3:8
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