Reading from Sunday, June 27

Yo, son.

I'd like to give a quick shout out to my friend Pete's blog - Clipouts of the Day. He basically cuts out pictures and words from parenting magazines and puts them in his kids lunches like little hilarious ransom notes. They are incredibly funny. Please check it out.

Some of my personal favorites are "Yo. You fat, son." and "This Baby is Protecting America." and "Straighten your hair with this thing." Enjoy.

Reading for June 27
2 Kings 10:32-12:21
I'ma be honest. I have no idea what's going on in 2 Kings anymore. The king changes every chapter and everyone's name is so similar I just have no idea who anyone is, and I imagine the only way to accurately follow the events is to have a family tree in front of you - or rename everyone with really distinct names - not stuff like this: "When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah"

...the who is on the what now?

So basically I think I need to just wait until the next book to get a foothold on what's going on anymore. I was able to gather that at some point, the Temple was destroyed. How did I miss that? Anyway, now they're rebuilding it and they are collecting money from all the offerings to the local priests. The money they gather is not used to create gold objects or shiny things, but to pay the workers for their labor. An act of humility on the part of man?

Also, I'm just realizing the hypocrisy of the use of these beautifully, lavishly adorned objects in the Temple. Weren't people being murdered for worshiping golden objects? I'm not saying that they were worshiping these things, but I think there was a somewhat conflict of interest. I have often had an internal debate with myself over the Vatican's use of extremely expensive objects. On one hand I could see how creating objects out of the best material on earth. On the other hand, we are called to use our money to help others, not opulently gloat about how great our religion is. I don't know, I go back and forth on the issue - nor am I certain about what this passage is trying to teach us.

Acts 18:1-22
There isn't much story progression going on here. Paul travels to Ephesus and Corinth - two of the cities to which he writes two of his most famous letters, Ephesians and Corinthians. But outside of that, nothing ground breaking from a story perspective.

Psalm 145:1-21
 ⁸ The LORD is gracious and compassionate,
       slow to anger and rich in love.
 ⁹ The LORD is good to all;
       he has compassion on all he has made.

This boggles my mind. How can a Jew who's only knowledge of God comes from the Old Testament, believe that God has compassion on all he has made? He has seen God utterly destroy nations and people for sometimes minor transgressions. Unless the psalmist here was privy to some future information, and was able to fully see the character of God and all his goodness, and then wrote a psalm about it...

Proverbs 18:1
 ¹ An unfriendly man pursues selfish ends;
       he defies all sound judgment.

Yes. Love each other today.