texting two kings

Two Kings a texting. Come play - 07729056452.

2Ki1 (/) Oh the faithlessness of this one defenestrated: we need not be. Of swearing at speed bumps and such, apt are we to self-justify self-pity, in the face of misfortune we deceive ourselves, believing God owes us, believing that victims of fate, of singleness, of genetic predisposition, of exhaustion, are exempt from idolatry prohibitions. Lovers we are free indeed to face all of life.

2Ki2-3 Elisha & Avoidance. Why? Some things are too painful, sometimes words are not enough. I need wisdom in when to speak & when not. 3v7 a sort of inversion of Ruth1's “you...I” with an “I...you”, ways we hide our will to power maybe. These superstitious kings; I feel now, bodily, the tension of hope for things & the god who is not this slot machine, God is not subject to my demands. But god heals infertile waters & fills valleys with water. This is an easy thing in the eyes of the Lord. Easy. Oh.

2Ki4-5 Is all well? There are no minor miracles and there are no occasions which cannot be reordered so to make explicit God's character. We are those artists charged to live with Elijian allusivity to demonstrate to a watching world the God who makes all things amazing. .. There is a connection between a culture of debt and the constraints on having/retaining children. God comes to break that, God comes to be known by breaking that. .. As Naaman. Be baptised. Be not proud. Be baptised as this is no mere ritual, v13 this is to do with Being. v14 So we must come as a child, so supernaturally to then be like a child, reborn. v17 Soil's significance relates us back to 1Ki8 and the value of place: revelation is still now limited, nodal and specific. v26 I have accepted money and garments in exchange for the employment of my God-given gifts. Oh hired hands, how can we but be?

2Ki6-7 God is all about us. Open my eyes, open our eyes. God is for us & not far from us. There is a cosmic battle, and God is all about us in strength. Praying in hope, in the tension of a world where some are fed by ravens and some eat their own children. A call to pray, a call to serve. & 7v9 a call to share good news. It cannot be kept to ourselves.

2Ki8-9 Frequently baffling. .. Why, of what cause, to what end, does the king restore the Shunammite woman's land? Except to image the Grace that promises any who have left houses brothers and all of Mk10v29? At a stretch, she is a woman previously of means who left it all in faithful obedience, but. Better that she were one without 4v8's history, that this might be a simpler mercy-justice less obscured by notions of reward. Anyways. We are London, many a sojourner's Philistia, many a sojourner's return. So grace them. .. 8v12 Arbitrary pronouns (Elisha is him and/or he) draw attention to the Look which elicits a pained shame felt here for all human brokeness? .. Ch9's stealth truthers, ninja annointers, are hard to apply, outside afghanistan. Perhaps there is a time and a place for such covert evangelism, eschat burglars speaking the truth in gloves. Breaking in to break through to difficult people.

2Ki10-11 Elijah and Jehu both bring to an end Baal worship, but differently. How do we compare them, what can we learn? I'm not sure of the answer, to think on. With Athaliah the promises of God to the line of David seem dead, dissolved, disappointed. A seeming betrayal of promise a time we are apt to doubt God's power, reality or care. But divine plans, seeds, hibinating child-kings we be led out, to new proclaimings, annointings, shouts of life. Let us take heart that God is steadfast & surprising, let us not give up when the solution cannot be seen by our eyes.

2Ki12-13 Lukewarmth is twice indicted, convictingly. First, the priests. We lose architectural embellishment to embezzlement: the life less decorated is a loss lost to squandering middlemen. We are middlemen. We are stewards and architecture-which-delights is but the canary in the stewardship coal mine. Unanswered, “Why are you not repairing the house?” Oh let us not eat because this is not working. Second, Joash. Shoot for the stars, with both barrels, on all cylinders. Let us with enthusiastic obedience and obedient enthusiasm go and Ecc9v10 and Col 3v23 and. God desires that we 'make an end of it', seeing things through, finishing well. Our life of limited ambition: we do not have because we do not ask. (Third) imagine a world without accountants. Such a world is possible 12v15.

2Ki14-15 These histories remind of our throwness, that we all have our genealogies, and we may do as our parents have done. But we are not judged for our parents' choices, we are judged for our own. And this is somehow how it is, our freedom withint throwness, God knows what we are rightly accountable for and what we are not. So choose well. This is not an atheist's existentialism but an acknowledgement of the God of the possible, the God of collaborative redemption.

2Ki16-17 How do you measure an idol? How should I measure my idols? Working backwards from these archetypally extreme examples in search of their constituent parts: 1. 16v3 Child sacrifice. My idolatry shows in my taking power over the powerless, denying the gift of gift, making expendable the sacred, searing my conscience in displays of misallegiance. 2. 16v10 Building altars. Symptomed here in the monkey-see-monkey-do mimicry of modelling duplicate altars, a formalist trusting in the magic of space/shape to save us, uncreative and destructive refashionings of the previously sufficient, previously sacred. 3. 17v7 Exile. While we are not culpably killed for our parents' sin, we do exist in a sea of systemic sin visited on from preceding generations. If the church is estranged, if we build houses only to not live in them, if we plant trees only to not eat their fruit, then ours is an exile? Of idolatry?

2Ki18-19 Destroying the bronze snake, a symbollic way of distancing from old faith, now deepened? Is there a healthy way of getting rid of habits of old faith? As I sort through old bits of paper, it all to be remembered or should some prayers be forgotten? Freedom & determinism again, ridding oneself of things from the past a way of declaring that our past is not our sole determiner? .. Do you think your words can replace military force? Maybe they always could. Hezekiah manifestly behaves differently because there is a God. Faithfully turning to prayer amidst discouragers discouragement. A confidence in God unlike Senna's confidence in himself. Take Hezekiah's story of faith this morning, it is for today. Come to the God who is real with your petitions.

2Ki20-21 Hezekiah, in search of lost time seeks a sign's sign, a miracle's premiracle. Why? Bear with me. BBC's Page Eight illustrated a sort of freedom which comes from 'living in injury time', but. We can out-do even this moribund heroism.. Promised a bulletproof 15 years, how would you then live? 1Cor15v55 with a Groundhog Day's generous zest for life? As HudsonT, premiracles enable us to live miracle-predicated dangerous lives, to risk marriage, to cross oceans, to lead others on faith-basedly financed mission. Alaz Hez wastes his borrowed time building bigger barns and Israel promptly returns to infanticide upon his demise, so my being-unto excursion lacks a tidy conclusion. Perhaps reading this sign episode as a flashback pre-Senna we can claim he did some miraculous good from this premiracle.. Oh lovers, know beyond knowing that you are loved, and so risk.

2Ki22-23 Knowledge makes us more accountable. God speaks when you read. With great education, insight, prophecy, comes great responsibility. God, seeking your revelation, know that it will have to change how we exist. Josiah the little-known hero of faith. It is altars & not just idols that are in need of tearing down. What are my pagan altars? All that facilitates iol worship..habits, places, material things, ways of engaging people, other. Let us covenant with God together, let us passover celebrate.

2Ki24-25 Idolatry leads to ruin. What is idolatry? The lie that you can have God-and. Polygamy's cake had and eaten. Schaeffer's synthesis. If you are fickle with God you will be fickle in all of life, short-termist, spread thin, fleetingly fashionable, second-handing, people-pleasing, double-minded, hollowed-out, in idolatry we are our own undoing. In believing we can serve God and serve idols we do not serve God. We become false 17v15. Note how Judah sides with Babylon, then Egypt, then Babylon. Either and any. God desires our unfickle affection, and desires that we image infickelity in all of life. .. If our living hope within is ailing, it is perhaps advised to clear out our incense bowls and sacred crockery which disguise our sickness. And in this sense there is hope in the purge wrought by Babylon. God is working for God's glory, God is working out a saving in all we see. So hope we.