Choices, Choices

Man it's been a week since the last time I posted on here.  Told you I was going to "try" to stay faithful to and everyday schedule, but it's hard to do sometimes.  Oh well, let's get on with it.



I read 2 Kings 24:18-25:7.  It was interesting for the most part.  OK, so it was interesting in strange kind of way probably, but still.  It tells the story of one of Judah's kings.  This king was named Zedekiah, and he was 21 when he started his reign.  It lasted for 11 years.  His reign was summed up in 10 verses.  That is less than one verse per year.  Doesn't seem like that's really a good thing to me.  If we read a little bit before this, say in verse 8 to 17, we discover that there was a king right before Zedekiah, and he reigned for 3 months (so 11 years is forever compared to that).  Once he was taken captive by the Babylonians, a new king was appointed who was the first kings uncle.

The main thing it seems that we learn from the 10 verses about Zedekiah is that "he did what was evil in the Lord's sight."  (To be honest, by this point in the book of 2 Kings this seems to be a running theme with the kings.  They are always doing what is evil in the Lord's sight.)  At the end of verse 20 we learn an important piece of information about Zedekiah: he rebelled against the kin of Babylon.  As we continue to read, we see that that was clearly the wrong choice to make.  It led to Zedekiah's downfall and punishment as well as the fall of Jerusalem.

Here is what I take from this today and would like to pass on to whoever happens to read this.  Zedekiah made a bad choice and he paid for it.  I really think that when we look at this situation, we see that the bad choice was that he did what was evil in the Lord's sight.  This started it all for him.  I think the same holds true for each of us as well.

When we start living in rebellion it usually stems from some kind of bad choice that we made early on in the process.  We have done something that was evil in the sight of the Lord.  Please don't misinterpret this though.  I don't believe that all the bad things that happen to us are because God is punishing us for making a bad choice.  Rather I think the vast majority of the bad things that follow the initial choice are our own doing.  We start to become hard hearted about what we are doing.  We rationalize our actions- "Well I've already messed up, I might as well keep going"- and then it starts to snowball on us.  Before long we feel like it is almost impossible for us to turn back from our bad choices.  We allow guilt and fear to drive us into more bad choices.

This was never what God intended for us.  Rather he is there waiting for us to return to him and to repent of our sin.  And when we do that he is able and ready and, most importantly, willing to forgive us.  All we have to do is return to him.  Yes there is pain and yes it feels like there is punishment, but there is above all else Love and Grace waiting for us.  Peace and Love y'all.