Not in the Cards

June 10, 2009

Today's Reading: 2 Kings 11-12 and Psalms 29-30

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book and saw something that didn’t seem to add up, and it was a little too convenient to the plotline. For example, there is a character that everyone says is dead, and then he or she shows up conveniently when he or she is needed?

In fact, I have begun a simple rule of thumb when I am watching a movie that says: unless you see someone die, that person is not dead. Sometimes it seems like a character is dead, as in shot in the stomach, and then the character shows up and does something extremely heroic, maybe as their last act. Think of the end of Ice Age when Diego the saber-toothed tiger shows up alive despite the fact he appeared to die in the previous scene.

This is what happened when all the relatives of Ahab were being killed. We hear in the last chapter that they are all dead, and then suddenly, there is this Joash guy who is miraculously alive.

At that point, I almost said: “no way, they were all dead”. I wouldn’t buy this explanation if I saw it in some movie, and yet the Bible expects me to take it on faith. Maybe reading books and watching too many movies is just not good to your spiritual health.

Now you want to know something even sillier? God tends to turn around things in his plotline of life that have no foreshadowing to them. In the dramatic biz, they call that “dues ex machine” where godly characters are lowered by mechanical pulleys and then they work out the main characters’ problems instead of them working it out.

The truth is that God is the one who can turn “our wailing into dancing, removing sackcloth and clothed with joy”. Just last week, I was feeling sorry for myself, and now I have at least one opportunity this week.

I believe that I have already covered this topic the other day, and it is weird that I am covering it again. But God has a way of turning things around that probably shouldn’t be turned around. He tends to twist the plot a way a movie or book would not, and make it so a loser wins and a winner loses.

No, this is the God that makes stuff happen that isn’t really made to happen a certain way.