"After the whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what He had done for Israel." Judges 2:10"But when they cried out to the Lord, He raised up for them a deliverer...." Judges 3:9
These two verses pretty much sum up the era of the Judges. The people seem to return in a figurative way to wandering back and forth in the wilderness. But it all begins because someone - actually, many someones - didn't tell the story leading right up to their part.
It's an incredible thought to realize the Bible is still being written and we are part of God's story.
This back and forth between faith and unbelief. It's so easy to see as the reader how obvious, how silly, how short-sighted it is. It's easy to be the reader in my favorite comfortable chair near the window. But standing up and leaving the room to go out and live, well, it's much harder to see our folly in the moment. I'd like to say we are more original and less predictable, more advanced in our understanding of spiritual things. But we're not. Sometimes I think our so-called scientific advancements and wired life make us think we are highly advanced in other ways. How little we've really changed. Why does God continue to watch the same reruns?
Thankfully, as predictable as our pattern of falling away in the good times is God's forgiveness and help in the difficult times when we cry out to him.
Lest we get too depressed by our personal failings today's reading provides a bit of comic relief (and I do mean relief). Ehud delivers a pointed message from God to Eglon king of Moab in the form of a double-edge sword that he sinks into the king's fat. Eglon escapes when the servants think the king's silence means he's taking a potty break. "They said, 'He must be relieving himself in the inner room of the house.' They waited to the point of embarrassment...." Judges 3:24-25.
As the great Skidmore of Murfreesboro would say, not exactly a Bible story that made it to the flannel board.
Flannelgraph or YouTube, we have to tell the story.
My post last year on this date.
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