🦁 Epiphany 5-6
Readings: Psalm 102:12-28; 2 Kings 8:1-6; Acts 15:36-41.
Reflection
Good morning. This is Tim Tribble, broadcasting from Sacramento, California. Today's readings come from us from Psalm 102 versus 12 to 28 second Kings. Chapter eight verses 1 to 6 and X. Chapter 15 verses 36 to 41. In our song today, we see a cry of personal and national distress. The psalmist is pouring out his heart to God and saying how wonderful and great God is. And I need your help.
And later on in in the end of the Psalm, in the last ten verses, we get the total trust in God, where He brings out the bringing out that God will release the prisoners. He is there for those who cannot speak for themselves. He listens to the oppressed, the condemned, and he releases his name and they will be declared and praised in Jerusalem.
And this is again, the psalmist and kind of a theme in the Psalms. How great God is. Oh, I'm having these problems. How God can help solve me, solve these problems because of his greatness.
In our reading from the Book of Kings, we revisit the Shining Light lady whom Elisha had raised her son from the dead. Elisha had come and God had spoken to a lie and told me to go to the lady and tell her that there was going to be a famine for seven years and that she needed to pick up her house and household and go somewhere else, which she did. She obeyed the word of the Lord in the warning of the Lord, went and lived in the land of the footfalls stains for seven years. And at the end of the seven years she returned, she went to appeal to the King of the shining lights for her land back at that time, the king was speaking to one of the servants of Elijah. Thy name hasI Azi and he was telling the king of all the great things that Elijah had performed through God with God's help, including restoring someone to life, raising the dead. And in walks the woman with her son and was the one who was raised from the dead. And he said, Look, KING, Here it is right here, living proof. This walked right into your throne room. And the king, of course, sees how God works. Turns around, gets the lady, appoints a royal person appointed to her and has everything restored to her that was hers because she, both the king and her, had listened to the word of the Lord and had followed what God had told them to do.
And the Book of Acts, we have another story of Paul. So originally said to the Saul to Paul moment, Paul became went out and he took with him Barnabas and they went out together. Will they been out? They had been preaching the gospel word, traveling throughout Asia, minor Middle East area and then turns around and in this reading today, Paul saying, hey, you know, we've been to all these places planted all these churches, we spread the word. We need to go back and check on them and see how they're doing.
And Barnabas is good with that. But he has he wants to take with him. John called Mark. I don't know who that is, but this is someone who walked who, according to the scripture, had withdrawn from them. Pamphylia is an area in South Asia minor. It would be now, and it was today, modern day Turkey in the area called Southern Anatolia.
So Paul and Barnabas split. Barnabas takes John Mark with him. Paul finds a new gentleman named Silas who came to him with a letter and they're ready to go. So he gets the blessing from the church of Antioch to take Silas with him. And now we have two mission teams going out into the world to spread the word of God.
People a lot of the things that we read in the Bible, especially the Old Testament and the saga of the Jews, as all to do with our human nature, who we really are. And it just goes around to show that we have been acting this way for a very, very long time. It's human nature, as we like to say. And this is what the message that Jesus brought to us is about, as there's better, there's different to love God with all your heart, your mind and your soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself.
Forgiving, loving, understanding. You know, we people, human beings have brought in over the 2000 plus years since Jesus walked this earth, all of our human nature and to Christianity, we've created all these systems. We've created all this hierarchy. You know, we have the churches, the buildings, the fancy store, all these different ways and some ways that I don't like the way this is going. So I'm going to go over here. Sometimes there's people pointing out, you know, Martin Luther was one pointed out there was a huge problem in the church at the time with the way the church was conducting itself.
So there's there's all these different things that come into play because of human nature. But something I like to look at in my personal life is really where am I at? How how is this affecting me? How my decisions, my choices, how I'm treating someone, how I feel about someone when maybe they haven't treated me as well as they could have or I would have liked or should have, or however you want to phrase it. And that's a really, really, really important thing to learn and to assess yourself and go in prayer and you'll get an answer. You will get an answer on how you should behave, how you did behave. And that's one of the big things to take away today is, again, love, God, love your neighbor. And really, really work is what I'm doing. Loving my neighbor. It's not easy. It's very difficult. I'm not good at it. But it is it's it's a journey. It is day to day working to better ourselves through the love of God. Amen.
