The Good Portion

Thanks to my church's New Testament reading plan , I've just finished reading Paul’s letters to the Thessalonian church. These letters pick up on a biblical theme as old as Genesis: waiting for salvation from wrath. The apostle Paul characterized the faith of the Thessalonian church this way: “. . . you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come”  1 Thess. 1:9b-10. They turned from idols to wait for Christ. Is this how you think of your calling? Is this how you view your life, as life of waiting for Jesus to come and deliver us from the coming wrath of God? I’ve got to admit, I wouldn’t probably have phrased it that way. But that might have something to do with the passive way which we usually use the word “wait.” Wait is what you do in a waiting room. But in Scripture, waiting is not passive. It’s being dressed and ready to go, sitting on the edge of ...

Josiah was six years old when his grandfather, Manasseh, died. Manasseh’s reign was long and wicked, but he died a humble and repentant man. Josiah’s father, King Amon, “did not humble himself before the Lord, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself, but this Amon incurred guilt more and more” (2 Ch. 33:23). Amon quickly and easily steered Judah back into idolatry. After only two years he was murdered, and eight-year-old Josiah became king in his place. Only God knows why—perhaps he’d been told about his grandfather’s repentance—but when he was 16 Josiah “began to seek the God of David his Father” (2 Ch. 34:3). At age 20 he set about destroying every vestige of idolatry and false worship in Judah. At 26, he began restoring the temple. That was when Hilkiah, the high priest, found a copy of the book of the Law of Moses (2 Ch. 34:14). After 18 years as king and a full decade of seeking the LORD, Josiah was finally about to hear God’s written word for the very first time.  “And whe...