Not like ours

June 6, 2009

Today's Reading: 2 Kings 3-4 and 2 Corinthians 8

I believe that there is a saying that “you’re ways are not like mine”. I will have to say that is completely true. Sometimes it is comforting to know that God has this plan for my life which concludes with a great eternity in heaven. And sometimes, that just confuses the hell out of me.

There are times in which God asks for things, and it doesn’t make sense to do them. Worse yet, we are usually asked to do it anyway. Take the king of Israel, the king of Judah, and the king of Edom. Their armies were all assembled to meet with the armies of Moab. Nobody knew what to do, and people generally tend to call out for God in desperation in times like these.

So naturally, people turned to Elisha. What happens then makes little sense when it happens, but crescendos into quite a conclusion. First of all, Elisha calls for a harpist, which is just odd. I guess that worked for Saul.

Then, during the music, Elisha has a great idea: there is going to be water. Granted, they were out in the desert, and water is a concern, but it there was some armies due to arrive and quenching your thirst should be the least of your worries.

So what do they start doing? Elisha orders them all to dig ditches. That would make sense in trench warfare, but that hadn’t been invented yet. Can you imagine all the soldiers who probably thought they were dead because their leaders don’t have a plan. It’s like the workers who are worried that the business is going to go under.

Well, they didn’t strike oil, but they got water. And it was not just any water, because when the sun hit it, it looked like blood. And then this blood was enough for Moab to let their guard down, because they thought the armies had destroyed each other.

Then the Israelites yelled “surprise” and just attacked and won. Now, how in the world did a simple digging of ditches win a battle. From what I can tell, there didn’t seem to a plan beyond the ditches for Elisha.

There wasn’t the planning scene like in Independence Day, where the heroes know the stage of their plans. Then something goes wrong, and the heroes have to improvise. No, this entire plan was based on improvisation.

At least on the heroes part. God tends to work like an Author, building suspense and taking the characters to the limits of themselves for one of the most exciting endings.