Scripture text for Monday, March 1st, 2010: Psalm 23:1-23:6

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Psalm 23 is one of the most memorized passages of the Bible. Do we just know the words in our heads or is the concept of this passage truly understood and in our hearts? To truly grasp this psalm we need to grasp it from the writer’s perspective.

This is a psalm of David. David may have written this late in his life after being battered and baffled by the trials of life. He had gone from shepherd boy to king, but he had made this transition through many years of deprivation, hardship and victory (1 Samuel 17 – 2 Samuel 24). He had been tried and tested in the dark valleys and on the mountaintops.

Scripture text for Friday, February 26th, 2010: 2 Kings 25:1-25:30

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Is God losing patience with you?

In 609 B.C., the last “good king” of Judah–King Josiah–died. Josiah “did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in all the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.” (2 Kings 22:2) “Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the LORD as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength.” (2 Kings 23:25) Josiah recognized that being one of God’s chosen people was a privilege that should not be taken for granted.

Scripture text for Wednesday, February 24th, 2010: 1 Kings 8:1-9:9

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“But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple have I built!” 1 Kings 8: 27

As I admired the interior of the sanctuary with its gothic style arches and beautiful stain glass as it captured the warm rays of sunlight, I tried to imagine what the church was like in its early days and then my thoughts were interrupted by the waiter. See the church where I now sat was a restaurant not a house of worship. Once possibly known by its congregation as a house of God, is now better known today as a place to dine on crab cakes and other Norfolk, VA cuisine. How does a place of worship become reduced to a dining hall? One could look into the local Norfolk history for an answer; maybe it was as simple as the congregation outgrew the building….we here at Riverside can relate to that problem or possibly the congregation dwindled in size to a point they could not keep their doors open. Regardless of the cause, the structure is no longer serving as a place of worship but it can serve as a reminder for us today that no matter how much we seek to build a great church building…God is bigger, more reverent, more powerful than anything we can capture in architecture. Does God reveal himself any less in a mud hut in Africa than he does in a crystal cathedral? As we dig deep into these passages of the Old Testament, we learn that the King Solomon’s temple served a much different role than our local modern church buildings do today. However, God’s warning to his people in 1 Kings 9 is applicable to us today. God instructs his people that his eyes and heart will be in the temple…

Scripture text for Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010: 1 Kings 2:1-3:28

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I have always been fascinated with the story at the end of 1 Kings 3. At the beginning of 1 Kings 3, Solomon asks for “a discerning heart to govern [God’s] people and to distinguish between right and wrong.” God grants his request and the story at the end of 1 Kings 3 becomes Solomon’s first demonstration of his wisdom.

I am fascinated by this passage for two reasons. First, and this is disturbing, 1 Kings 3 is the only passage in the Bible where suggesting that a baby be cut in half turns out to be a good thing. (If you were hoping just to read this devotion and not the actual Bible text, I hope that was an effective teaser.)