Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“[The King of Assyria said,] ‘Thus shall you speak to King Hezekiah of Judah: Do not let your God on whom you rely deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, November 22, 2022
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Okay, now I just see the Frenchmen on the tower in Monty Python and the Holy Grail saying, “Go away, or I will taunt you a second time!” Because this Rabshakeh dude just will not shut up. Now he says, “You can’t rely on God. All the other nations we’ve smashed to bits called on their gods and none of those gods showed up to save them, so why will you be any different?” I’m just waiting for him to catapult a cow over the wall of Jerusalem.
There are times when we wonder if we can really rely on God. After all, the world is a mess and lots of us are praying all the time for things to change. We’re told to PUSH: Pray Until Something Happens, but so little seems to happen. Occasionally we’ll hear about some victory or other here or there—a law changed, abolished, or passed; community organizations making an actual difference; lives changed. But on the heels of those moments of good news come more dire predictions about climate change, new reports of unarmed black men being killed by police, another mass shooting, the loss of long-standing protections under the law.
I can’t heed the taunting of the Rabshakeh. I have to cling to the belief that God does act—is acting—in the world, through the work of countless prophets and practitioners, scientists and social workers, here and everywhere. I need to continue to PUSH no matter what, trusting as Hezekiah does, that God has our back. And I need to seek out the good news that doesn’t always make it to the nightly news—after all, most news programming is reliant on advertising dollars and has to scream sensational and disastrous headlines to get people riveted to their seats while the ads play. And on that cynical note, I’ll leave it.
Where do I find evidence of God’s action in the world despite bad news?
