Wednesday 25 July 2012

Hope Shaped Pears

After the corporate high of building the temple, over the generations things go bad, from bad to worse, and worse to down right pear shaped.

Read either Kings or Chronicles, and you will see the slippery slide. The mission dream made possible by the exodus event seems to be totally in tatters. The thought of a lasting kingdom is now a joke or by-word for onlooking nations. Its not a good story. It doesn't make for good mission.

Yet even as the Chronicler looks back on the whole sorry story, and rounds it off in 2 Chronicles 36, the closing deal is one of hope. Hope that one day God will again be with His people, signified by a rebuilt temple.

Yes even after several iterations of ignored warnings, and the often predicted result of Judah & Israel going into total ruin, God has not finished with them. His covenant love is still to be re-kindled. It is total ruin, but not everlasting ruin. The pear-shaped situation becomes injected with a hope that only God can bring.

The final verse of Chronicles is hope shaped pears: God's purposes can, and will, be worked out.

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