Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Kings 3-4.

Each of the accounts in today’s passage illustrate ways in which God provides for needs.  In the first account, King Joram got himself and others into a bad situation, and even then he only sought God’s aid at the nstigation of Jehoshaphat.  Nevertheless, God delivered him, and those with him, from the mess of his own making.  In the second account, a widow seeks God’s aid to escape debt and provide for her sons and herself.  Through Elisha, God provides her the means to  earn the funds needs to do so.  In the third account, the woman provided Elisha with food and a place to stay and asked nothing in return.  Elisha asked God, and He gave her a son.  The woman had not asked for a son, had even asked Elisha to not raise her hopes.  When the child died, the woman was distraught and blamed Elisha for giving her the son in the first place, but did not ask for anything.  Elisha raised the boy back to life for her.  The final two accounts describe different ways in which God can provide food for the hungry..

In the first account, Joram did not have faith in God, but God rescued him because of his friend, Jehoshaphat.  Let us seek to be Jehoshaphat to our non-believing friends (although, perhaps we could work a little harder to convince them to turn to God than Jehoshaphat appears to have done).  In the second account, God provides the woman with a way to work her way out of her precarious position.  When we seek God’s aid, we need to recognize that He may provide us with a means to work towards solving our problems.  In the third account we learn that serving God may bring us joy we did not seek, and that God can overcome the inevitable sorrow.  The last two accounts show us that we need to be open to God using different solutions at different times for the same problem.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.