Small Histories

May 25, 2009

Today's Reading: 1 Kings 1-2 and Mark 16

Anyone remember the election of 2000? How could you forget? I mean, Bush Jr. and Gore were going at it, each one saying that they won.

I always thought that was the most ridiculous thing to happen to America since Clinton and Lewinsky. I mean, all you have to do is just count the stinking votes for crying out loud! I mean, whoever has the most wins! Are you really trying to tell me that there was some sort of tie? Man, that got everyone wondering about electoral colleges, didn’t it?

I would imagine that something similar occurred during the days Adonijah. Yet I can’t really imagined how it occurred. I mean, when Solomon was born, did David make some sort of proclamation saying: “Hey, everyone, I believe my son Solomon will be king instead of me. So if I’m ever on my deathbed, and you’re wondering who is next, don’t pick some other son, pick Solomon.”

Okay, that was a stupid slogan, but you get my drift. Had David made some sort of formal proclamation, or had put it on a certain stone tablet, then Adonijah would never have been able to set himself up as king. And yet by some sort of technicality, this guy, whose ambition was as great as the whole kingdom, apparently, was almost the next Solomon, with or without the wisdom.

Yeah, who knows, maybe Adonijah may not have fallen into the bad soup that Solomon eventually went into, but if you have to win by some technicality, then that is pretty pathetic. I’m sure there are a lot of George W. Bush fans who are really ticked off by now, but hey, history don’t lie.

Yet history is all about little things occurring. I mean, does anyone think that it is odd that the ultimate salvation of man came in the form of some carpenter from Nazareth? I mean, what if Jesus was some kind of cable guy, hairdresser, or some middleman guy that you would never notice was missing.

And yet some empty tomb that could have gone unnoticed is Israel was really the thing that changed the world. I suppose that the lesson to be learned is that big things do some in small packages, and that even when they are opened, we don’t really how important it is until generations later.

So how is it that anything ever happens, anyway? I mean, in all this world of seemingly important happenings, sometimes the simplest of things become grand enough to change the world.