Hello. One Kings crossing London daily betwixt texters so inclined. Come play - 07729056452.1Ki1-2 Old elders and the interregnum quandry of who and how. David, as senility saps his virility, knows not and knows not what, and so our baffled king gives way to the hallelujah chorus.
1Ki3 Another much recounted tale that we would seek to make enfleshed today. God is so big and powerful, asking him to make me wiser, make me better, it is a terrifying prayer to pray. Make us better, remake us. Solomon's wisdom here demonstrated to be married to compassion. Seek wisdom for compassion today, for that which will confront you, for surely it will.
1Ki4-5 Wisdom is. Wisdom is from God 5v12. Wisdom is for worship 5v7. Wisdom is in the trees 4v33. Wisdom sings 4v32. Wisdom is breadth, wisdom is depth 4v29. Wisdom cooks on a rota, but more than that, wisdom begets structures, timetables and delegation with the purpose of the dissemination of wisdom: wisdom works out wise ways of making wisdom widespread. And then cathedrals. 4v20 By social justice cathedrals are built. And of wisdom-wrought peacetime. Why war we, this nation at war knows not, as David knew not.
1Ki6-7 So architecture yeah, full of the redundant detail and careful making you hope that we would better notice, enjoy, experience as worship. Tell me, how does this compare with what you hope for, with Huram the bronzesmith known by Solomon & invited to play. What can we learn? Building, dwelling..the dwelling of God. God in buildings. Most Holy Places. If Christ tears down the curtain, prayer is ceaseless &everything is spiritual, are there no more most holy places? A well trod question, the answer is probably yes and no? But what does that mean for buildings, & what for the way we spend today's time?
1Ki6-7 Oh happy the architecture of happiness. Holy Places Are. And today they are not less nodal, the happening of holiness is not less placed, but it is as if the one greenhouse, that jewish prototyping workshop, has been flung open, and spores as mustard seedlings there germinated as little mysteries for long ages are now blown on the Spirit's wind to entemple the cracks of the world, to renature the voids. Berry speaks of 'no unholy places, but sacred places and desecrated places.” thither go we to entemple.
1Ki8-9 Let us benedict out houses thus, that God's eyes would see us in 24/7 prayer, v29. .. Praying towards a place, can we consider this unsuperstitiously? Perhaps contrasting it with 9v8. We live publicly; our temples and our homes and our bodies are the storefronts to the goodlife, windows to the soul. So comport oneself with a conspicuous orientation that acknowledges what God has consecrated and where. That our entempled landscape might not become enruined by our incorrigible forgetfulness.
1Ki10-11 Knowledge for knowledge's sake is never enough aye, even it if is a good. Wisdom without faithfulness is dead. What are my hundred idol-worshipping wives in my life? What increases to steal me from God without my noticing? What & who's influence?
1Ki12 My little finger. A timely moment of happy house escapism last night saw Casino Royale. A worthless film. But one which quips this exact euphemistic boasting. What are we to make of this Kinsey fashioned Carry On Kinging sort of school boyish laddery? While easily we could leap from the heavy yolks here to our new King whose yolk is easy, perhaps we would miss an intermediary. We do not merely exchange yolks but paradigms. The paradigm here represented in the dick+whip combination is a carrot+stick model of leadership built on marketing+legislation: promising all the sexual potency of bus ads and commanding the injurious retribution of mortgage holders' commuter hours. This blind boasting+striving begets the crescendo of sex+violence which issues the collapse of such an empire on those built. So. Jesus' servant leadership is not merely lighterly burdened, but rather is another game altogether. So we, Rm3v27, 2Cor 11v30.
1Ki13 Truth and lies innit. Lying in the name of God, lying for the sake of a perceived good, lying in order to offer hospitality. Lying is always the manifestation of an attitude that we know better than God. There are truths & there are falsehoods, & Good is God, God knows the secret things, God will expose lies with true truth. In an aching for truth is a gladness that I will be judged.. Truth will win so tell the truth. Truth & conviction: do not be led from God's voice by others, not even by your elders, not even by prophets. & of letting anyone be priests as the 'fatal sin' in my version – this is not the priesthood of all believers but a disbelief disvalue of truth.
1Ki14-15 A study in the theme of the masquerading, charading, pantomiming, pretend-to-be-my-sistering all through the OT would not be unprofitable. And we find ourselves in this: all the ways we seize our facticities with both hands, taking power to manufacture identity, to closet our shame. This because we fear 'unbearable news', this because we know how far we have lied and accordingly how very overdue we are to meet a lion in the road. We hide from an angry God who isn't, we sin striving to fight a fight that has already been won and to become a beloved which we already are. Let's not... So, in this line of bad kings, Asa is notable for his prudent dependence and seeking of peace through a gift economy. Let's.
1Ki16-17 The return to an endless cycle of kingly rebellion is somehow more painful after David's story. The front to back reading that gives more context to David makes clearer why he is so held up as aman after God's heart. To be so tangibly distinctive & Godly...we should seek psalmic honest intimacy with a God who would make us such. Elijah comes into thoughts about trusting God for money, trusting God for all provision & then to raise the dead. I remember a prayer over me last year, before I know where money would come from, that I would be fed by ravens, & so it has been. God remind us teach us what it is to trust in provision & how you would have us do that in this season. Please provide what we need, & bring. the dead. to life. Help me to mean it, help me to see it, help me to participate.
1Ki18-19 Much too much in this bumper issue. Obadiah our ecologist demonstrates a right fear of God that is prophet-feeding and creation caring .. Know that truth-tellers qua truth-tellers will be known as troublers. In such contexts as we are each called to make God conspicuous we should seek that sort of triply saturated soaking such that the fire which consumes us would be God alone .. Under our broom tree: if we have been fed by ravens, if we have seen the fire and felt the rain. How is it that we, as Elijah, still haemorrhage faith? Drenching is an opportunity, in our wet weakness God is strong.
1Ki20-21 I don't know how to apply this to our mercy justice mercy justice, how best to read it through an NT lens.. Like the Arameans I let God be the God of the hills & not the valleys, quick to compartmentalise, dichotomise, rationalise. Forgive me, come & be God. God of the valleys. Advice to a sullen king: a Satrean self-assertion that could be a popular self-help. These are not God's ways.
1Ki22 Here how we, like these, hate those who speak to us the hard prophecies. And so homogeneously we huddle, huddled amongst those who tell us the 'peace, peace' we want to hear. .. Here how we really do hope our masks will save us, and so, overboldly, into battle to a disguised demise, with our papier mache identity impotent against the slings and arrows. So how should we properly prepare and protect? Unsure, but by a right fear of God and a speaking plainly of the enemy who is there. (/)
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