Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“When he turned round and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, November 10, 2021
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Okay. Couldn’t not call this out. I mean come on, people. Some village kids make fun of Elisha for being bald and God sends a couple of bears to kill them? Forty-two of them? Seriously. I’ve been a professional substitute teacher. You can imagine the stuff I’ve had to deal with in that capacity. Elisha needed to grow a thicker skin, for crying out loud. They were CHILDREN!
Okay. Got that out of my system. This is just one of those stories in the Bible that makes me shake my head. Did they tell it to scare kids into not making fun of priests? Or was there some other deep theological meaning I’m missing? I gotta just let this one go, I think.
Are there stories in the Bible that leave you utterly bewildered? How do you think about those stories?
![1 Kings 17:1-16 [17-24], God’s Care for the Widow](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56b39b61ab48de92d991a40a/bf37035e-33d5-439f-a0d6-a68b02d0f1bc/24-11-03.jpg)
