Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Memorial of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, religious
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
All the kingdoms of the earth
King Hezekiah had a message from King Sennacherib. Not a hotline red phone nuclear threat as might happen now, but just as serious.
The kings of Assyria have doomed all other countries; will you, then, be saved?
You’re next, King Hezekiah. What do you think of that?
Hezekiah took the letter and spread it before him in the temple of the Lord. “Here me, O Lord. Open your eyes, O Lord, and see! Save us from the power of this man, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God.”
In the temple, the prophet Isaiah heard the king’s words and took them to Yahweh. And then Yahweh spoke through Isaiah:
I have listened! Out of Jerusalem shall come a remnant, and from Mount Zion, survivors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this.”
Isaiah’s word from God did not include a timetable, but it did promise protection to Hezekiah and at least some of his people. And God wasted no time.
That night the angel of the Lord went forth and struck down 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp. So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, broke camp and went back home to Nineveh.
That very night. And it is now, in the silence, when war has passed us by, that we can sit and be thankful.
Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised
In the city of our God, on the mountain of his holiness
Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth
Is Mount Zion on the sides of the north,
The city of the great King.
The time after the crisis has past, when we can rest and recall how our powerful God changed everything with one angel, in one night – that’s the time when we remember and share with each other and, even more, with our children.
O God, we ponder your mercy within your temple.
We could have turned tail and run, we could have fought the Syrians with our own devices, but we did neither. Our good king chose the road less traveled. He sought the counsel of God, and God spoke.
Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many. How narrow the gate, and constricted – the road that leads to life.
Jesus must have sought the counsel of his Father every single day. In the world of Spirit the wars and crises are unending. Death, sickness, madness, and fear were rampant then. And of course they are still. So we seek a balance between action and contemplation.
But in neither need there be fear or death. God’s mountain rises higher than either of those threats from Satan.
(2 Kings 19, Psalm 48, John 8, Matthew 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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