God gives life faithfully, even when our unfaithfulness brings death
Every day we're reading or listening to part of the Bible together and sharing thoughts with you. Today it’s Bern Leckie:
What did I like about today’s passage?
Today’s passage is a bit of a strange sandwich. There are more family lines listed, some twice, as well as a slither and a big chunk of story. What’s going on?
The idea standing out to me is God’s faithfulness contrasted with human unfaithfulness. On the human side, we’re focusing on Saul, Israel’s first king, as demanded by God’s people when they rejected God’s direct rule and wanted to be like other nations – see 1 Samuel 8 for that story. Saul was chosen apparently because he embodied the strength people desired for fighting battles, and he could have decided to be the whole blessed package by following God faithfully.
But Saul chose unfaithfulness and died for it. That’s the message of chapter 10 here, and it’s clearly a tragedy, not just for him but his family and the whole country. This didn’t just affect a few people at one time, but it echoed through Israel’s whole history. It looks like a symptom of the much wider unfaithfulness God knew would make his people drift out of reliance on him and into the trouble which ultimately led to their defeat and exile. That is made explicit in the little slither of story, 1 Chronicles 9 verse 1.
However, what I love in the rest of this passage – yes, the lists of names we all skimmed through – is that we get two chances to see the bigger picture from God’s point of view. Can you find Saul in each list, once in chapter 8 and once in chapter 9? He is there, promise! What do you notice about the shape of these lists?
What stands out to me is that life did not end with Saul and his fallen sons, not even for his family line. Saul had a great grandson, Micah (not the prophet), whose family multiplied admirably, through to a generation with so many sons and grandsons (150!) even the Chronicles writers could not list them all. What looked like death, God turned into life.
What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?
God can turn the tragedies which look the biggest to us into much bigger blessings over time. He works over a span of time which we might not be able to grasp, but with purpose and direction we can discern and follow if we choose to ask.
God wants us to ask. He has gifted us with a multiplicity of life and talent, including lines of people who specialise in things we don’t dare to dream of doing ourselves, and he can lead a body of people to do much more than we can individually if we learn from Saul’s example.
What am I going to do differently as a result?
Take time this week to ask God who else he might lead me to work with on things that I might have got on with alone if I had not asked.
Who am I going to share this with?
I don’t know yet – I’ll ask around!