Category Archives: Life Group lessons

Buildipedia, Engineering, flood studies, Life Group lessons, Suite 101, Writing

A Full Week Ahead

Leave a comment

Yesterday was restful, sort of. I began the day with lots of aches and pains, especially in my left arm, after the home improvement work of Wednesday through Saturday. Even the after-church walk down the trail to the Crystal Bridges Museum construction site overlook was restful. Ten minutes each way in 95 degree heat, but with clouds obscuring the sun.

So I face the new work week a bit tired, but not so much as late last week. My main engineering work this week will be two flood studies: Little Osage Creek in Centerton AR and Blossom Way Creek in Rogers AR. The Little Osage one is tweaking the computer model based on recent survey information and tweaking the mapping as a result, and getting it sent off again to FEMA. The Blossom Way one is more substantial. I finally have data on the previous study, and need to extend that floodplain into new areas upstream and merge new survey data with the existing. There is a major difference in the amount of flood water between my calculations and the previous study, and I have to work that out this week. Some training may also be on the docket this week.

For writing, I have an assignment for Buildipedia, deadline next Monday. I’d like to have it wrapped up and in the mail this week, though. It’s on America’s wastewater infrastructure, a subject I know fairly well but haven’t looked at for a while. Still the research will be easy. I may also receive a contract this week for the series of articles they want me to write on construction contract administration. Those will be shorter (300-500 words), and should appear on the site during September, maybe four or five articles, though I proposed as many as seven.

I’d also like to get two articles written for Suite101.com: the next one in my series on technical analysis for stock trading, and one about the St. Jacob’s Well site in southwestern Kansas. I’m ahead of the article quota required by my Suite contract, but these are two fairly easy articles. Might was well get them written and posted and give them a chance to be earning a little revenue.

I also have two more lessons to write in my adult Sunday school (a.k.a. Life Group) series Sacred Moments. I taught one on ordination yesterday, that seemed to be well received. The next one is on last rites/death, then one on foot washing and the series is over. I will need to write a sell sheet on this and perhaps market it as a potential publishable Bible study.

I don’t anticipate that the week will give me time to work on my novel. I’m not sure about carving out time to go to writers guild meeting tomorrow night, though it’s possible. If I complete the other items, that will be enough.

Life Group lessons

What One Thing is Strongest of All?

Leave a comment

Today I started teaching a new study in our Life Group, a five week series titled “What One Thing is Strongest of All?” I haven’t spoken about it before on this blog, mainly because I was involved in posting other things. This is a different study in that it comes from the Apocrypha, not from the Bible.

About a year ago (or maybe it was two) our pastor did a Wednesday night series on the canon of the Bible. During that he discussed the Apocrypha and explained how it is considered useful for instruction, not for doctrine. So I thought it would be good to do a lesson series on it.

Lynda and I read 1st Esdras (called 3rd Esdras for those of you with Roman Catholic Bibles) together, and in the midst of it was a story about three Jewish bodyguards of King Darius of Media-Persia. The king held a great banquet, then afterwards had insomnia. His bodyguards spent the time with him and suggested a contest. Each of them would write what he thought was the strongest thing of all, seal it, and put it under the king’s pillow. The next morning, when the king woke, he would take the three sealed suggestions, call some other Persian judges, and read the statements. Whichever statement was considered the wisest, the bodyguard who wrote it would receive all kinds of good stuff from the king.

The king must have agreed to this (the text doesn’t say so) for they did just that. The three bodyguards made their three statements and slipped them under the pillow. Actually, one of them cheated and made two suggestions. Not stated in the text but implied, somehow this must have helped the king’s insomnia.

This week, I gave the class some general information on the Apocrypha, then read the start of the contest. I then had each member write on a slip of paper what they would write if they were in the position of the Jewish bodyguards. What one thing is strongest of all? We had a variety of answers, both serious and humorous. I then had each of the two tables take time to list three answers to the question, then we discussed it.

It seemed everyone enjoyed it. We had three visitors in attendance, family of one of our regular couples. I’m not sure what they thought about it. And, I’m not sure how well this study will be received by all. Hopefully they will see it as a good break in the routine.

Good King-Bad King, King Asa, Life Group lessons

Good King, Bad King

Leave a comment

Well, today I began teaching Good King, Bad King to our adult life group at church. I’ve written about this off and on. The lesson series will be about the kings of Judah and Israel, which were a series of good and bad kings. It seems that Israel had more bad then good, while Judah may have had about the same.

I began with King Asa, third king of Judah after the division. I’ve blogged about Asa before:

The first prophet speaks to him
Asa’s first religious reforms
Asa and the high places of Judah
Asa responds to a threat from Israel
Another prophet confronts Asa
The Jerusalem Assembly: good or bad?

For life group I’m breaking this down into two lessons. The first covers Asa’s early years, and focuses on the good he did. The second covers his later years, and focuses on the mistakes he made then.

The class went well, despite the fact that I left the handouts I had prepared on the kitchen table, including the creative non-fiction piece I was going to read to start the class. I relayed the creative non-fiction from memory as best I could. As expected, no one was able to guess which king it was about. During class, several people focused in on the Jerusalem assembly, and were troubled about it, specifically the part that anyone who did not take the oath to follow I AM wholeheartedly was to be killed. I wasn’t going to bring that up this week, but rather next week, but it might be good to have it now. Next week it will be easier to show that assembly as possibly the turning point (for the worse) in Asa’s life.

I’m ready for next week already. I think now I will go and write some on my harmony of the gospels, either finish up an unfinished appendix or possibly some passage notes. I’m not quite ready to jump back in with Suite 101 yet, due to the picture deal. Maybe in a couple of days.

Engineering, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, flood studies, Genealogy, Harmony of the gospels, Life Group lessons, reading

4:20 PM, Friday Afternoon

Leave a comment

This has been a full and busy day.

Work wise, I completed the base work on the Little Osage Creek Flood Study. That is, I:

– entered new rainfall data into the hydrology model for the 10-, 50-, 100-, and 500-year rainfall events, and re-ran the run-off calculations. Since I hadn’t run the 500-year before, I had to make adjustments in the overflow structures of eleven detention ponds. By noon, I had a successful run-off model.
– entered the new run-off values into the hydraulics model and re-ran the flood calculations. This was successful at about 3:50 PM. That doesn’t mean I’m quite done with this. I still need to run two phases of ditch improvements and one major future condition, but the hard work is done. Oh, and I still need to write the report, fill out the FEMA forms, and submit it. But with the work today, I consider the hard part done.

I also helped a man in the office with construction site problems.

Personal work wise, I:

– Proofread my article for Internet Genealogy; found a few changes to make; typed the changes; printed the article; proof-read it (in one uninterrupted sitting); found a few more changes to make; typed them; proof-read it and saw it was where I wanted it to be; and e-mailed it to the editor. The article still is not quite finished, because…
– I once again called the professor I wanted to interview for the article, and once again had to leave a message. I’ve found a work-around in case I can’t get a hold of him.
– Mailed my mother-in-law’s income taxes. “So late?” you ask. Yes. She doesn’t owe anything, they don’t owe her anything, she probably doesn’t even need to file at her income level, so yes, quite late, but it’s done for this year.
– Walked a mile on the noon hour.

I approach the end of a day of great accomplishment that made the whole week worthwhile, and somewhat made up for my inefficiencies of the last two weeks, and the two weeks before vacation. I have only 22 pages to go on my reading book, which I will finish tonight and write my review over the weekend. Next in the reading pile is Team Of Rivals, which I am looking forward to. I’m fairly close to finishing the edits on the John Cheney file that I’ve been plodding through a little each night for the last week and a half. I’ll surely have them done by Sunday afternoon, after which I’ll print and file it, file accumulated genealogy papers and clean up my mess in the Dungeon. Hopefully I’ll put genealogy behind me for a while and figure out what to write next. Probably it will be one or two appendixes on the Harmony of the Gospels. Possibly it will be a chapter or two of In Front of 50000 Screaming People. I’ll also consider working on queries for other articles, or fleshing out proposals for the Bible studies I’ve been working on recently.

Too many choices; too little time.

Bible study, Life Group lessons

A re-look at salt

Leave a comment

Our pastor is preaching a series of sermons on the Beatitudes. Since our Life Group just finished a lesson series and had not yet decided on our next series, we (my co-teacher and I) decided to do a series on the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. I get to sit back and listen to my co-teacher on this one.

We began yesterday, looking at Matthew 5:13-16, the salt and light passage. This got me thinking about salt, and what its uses are:

– as a flavoring ingredient. Salt is the king of spices, the one we use too much of, but oh how good it tastes! I have a habit of shaking just a little too hard and a little too long. Supposedly salt brings out the natural flavor of the food, but I wouldn’t swear to that. Obviously, too much salt makes for bad taste; too little salt makes for bland taste.

– as a preservative. Before refrigeration, salt was used often to preserve meats and other foods. In North Carolina, a friend of ours cured hams in his shed. The meat hung there in all seasons. He went out on a regular schedule and did his salt thing with the hams. We ate some at his house, and it was good, salty but still tasty. I’m sure there was a technique he knew about the right amount of salt to use. Too much would have made it unpalatable; too little would have allowed the meat to spoil.

– as a healing agent. Yes, despite the talk of “salt in the wound”, salt actually has healing properties. On board navy vessels, when someone was flogged, the washed the wounds with salt water. That 3 percent salt solution helped the wounds heal. Many other uses of salt are documented. Now, if you put pure salt in the wounds, I imagine that would have a negative effect.

So in all of these, salt is most effective in a certain dose. Too little is ineffective; too much is either bad to taste or unhealthy.

Perhaps this should speak to us about our Christian walk and witness. Our walk has to be pure, but our witness does not have to be the entire salt shaker poured out on every person we come in contact with. The right amount of witness will be attractive, and will build the kingdom.

Or so it seems from my perspective.

Good King-Bad King, King Asa, Life Group lessons, Writing

Productive Days

Leave a comment

I have one more post to make on King Asa. At least I think I do. Right now I can’t find the notes on what the last post was to be about. But I need a break from that, so today I’ll just make a general progress-of-life type post.

Late last week and the weekend were productive days, for writing and for other things. I worked hard on my Good King, Bad King study for our Life Group. Right now it’s only two classes, on the life of King Asa, who is both the good and bad king. I’m going to teach it a couple of Sundays in May while we wait for our new quarterly study to arrive. This will be a good Bible study, and I plan someday to expand it into eight to ten lessons, maybe even more. However, the amount of research I did for this tells me this may have to wait until retirement.

Friday night Lynda got it in her head to try to find a couple of books we’ve never been able to find since we moved to Bella Vista from Bentonville in 2002. Our basement has lots of boxes, but very few we haven’t gone through. Friday evening we went through those, didn’t find the missing books, but found other things we had forgotten about. Some of it could easily be discarded, as it related to employment at places where we are not now employed. Other was simply mis-boxed, and could be easily taken to other, similar things. We found several boxes with not a whole lot in them. We consolidated some of this, the entire process concluding Saturday evening. The end result is our “stuff” stuffed in the basement is less than before, though we have much more similar work to do.

My genealogy work continues, and I’m trying to find a way to do a little bit at a time. Normally when I get the genealogy bug, it consumes me and I become a basket case. Not so at the moment. I am slowly going through the life of Peter Cheney, son of John Cheney of Newbury Massachusetts. He lived 1638-1696, and is Lynda’s gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-grandfather. My document of events in his life is up to five pages (with source footnotes), and I feel good about it.

Writing wise, I have posted six times about the life of King Asa of Judah, and three times at The Senescent Man blog about the Baby Boomers, and why I call them the Candy Store Generation. I have one more post to make in that series. Also this weekend I completed a sonnet, one that has been buzzing around in my head for a couple of years, which finally gelled Friday night and was finished by Saturday afternoon. This morning I posted it for critique at Absolute Write.

Reading wise, I kept up with my Bible reading, and with pleasure reading in the two books of letters, one Tolkien’s and one C.S. Lewis’. They are different style letters. The selected ones in the Tolkien book are mainly about his writing and publishing. The Lord of the Ring is heavily discussed. I’m at the point where he had just finished the book and is weighing two options for publishing. The CSL selected letters are on Christianity, letters to various Christian friends, or people considering Christianity. They are denser than Tolkien’s, and I find I have to have absolute silence to read and comprehend them. Tolkien’s I can read while the television is on.

The other big item is: I have my first freelancing writing assignment! Last Thursday I went to Barnes & Noble after work in search of a certain book I wanted to buy and give to someone. It was not available, though another, similar book was and I got that. Then I went to the magazine racks to look for a couple of mags to research and see if I can write articles for them. One of them, Internet Genealogy, I discovered at Borders in Overland Park last month. I read then it while drinking a large house blend, mainly for my love of the subject.

Then, last week it hit me that maybe I could write something for that mag. So I got a copy, read it in the coffee shop while drinking a large house blend, and took notes and began to think of what I could write about. The on-line database I’ve been using to research Peter Cheney is at a site that genealogical researchers might not expect, so that seemed a good place to start. Thursday night (actually Friday morning about 4 AM) I couldn’t sleep. Got up at 5 AM and drafted a query letter to Internet Genealogy proposing that article. I sent it via e-mail on my noon hour on Friday, went for my noon walk, came back to my desk and had a reply from the editor: yes, write the article.

This will be for pay–not huge pay, but certainly enough to make the work worthwhile. This will be for platform building–not a great platform, but something to show editors and agents. This will be to demonstrate that my writing is good enough to be published. We’ll see.

Good King-Bad King, King Asa, Life Group lessons

The Jerusalem Assembly: Good or Bad?

Leave a comment

The Bible records two major military issues for King Asa: first the invasion of a combined Cushite and Libyan army from the south, and later a threat from the sister nation Israel from the north. The first one drove Asa to prayer, as he knew his forces were outnumbered and they had no hope for victory if God did not intervene. The second drove Asa to form an alliance with Ben-Hadad, king of Aram, in so doing plundering his own temple and personal treasury. In other words, he either bribed Ben-Hadad or hired him to provide mercenaries.

In each case a prophet came to Asa. The first was Azariah, who gave Asa a message of hope and encouragement. The second was Hanani, who chastised Asa, told him he had chosen poorly, and advised that as a result God’s intentions had been thwarted. The second time Asa continued to behave badly, apparently to the end of his days. The first time, he instituted more religious reforms and called for an assembly of the nation in Jerusalem to renew their religious zeal.

The Jerusalem Assembly. Let’s see what the scripture has to say about it.

Then he [Asa] assembled all Judah and Benjamin and the people from Ephraim, Manasseh and Simeon who had settled among them, for large numbers had come over to him from Israel when they saw that the LORD his God was with him.
…..They assembled at Jerusalem in the third month of the fifteenth year of Asa’s reign. At that time they sacrificed to the LORD seven hundred head of cattle and seven thousand sheep and goats from the plunder they had brought back. They entered into a covenant to seek the LORD, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul. All who would not seek the LORD, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman. They took an oath to the LORD with loud acclamation, with shouting and with trumpets and horns. All Judah rejoiced about the oath because they had sworn it wholeheartedly. They sought God eagerly, and he was found by them. So the LORD gave them rest on every side. 2nd Chronicles 15:9-15

On the surface, this sounds pretty good. They sought God wholeheartedly; they found Him. They did this with oaths and with loud acclamations. Wait, this is what troubles me, both the oaths and loud acclamations, the trumpets and horns and shouting. The enthusiasm of the moment may have caused many to be carried away and do things and make oaths that were not wholehearted–that and the threat that if they didn’t do so they would be put to death. What would you do if everyone was shouting and declaring oaths to God, with trumpets and horns blaring and saying anyone who didn’t take the oath would be put to death?

I’m sure many were sincere, but just as many were either caught up in the moment or afraid not to make the oath.

Throughout the history of the church, the whole business of enthusiasm has waxed and waned, been in favor and out of favor. During Wesley’s days it was generally frowned on. Get too enthusiastic and people wondered about you. During the 18th century revivals in America, it was embraced. Certainly some enthusiasm is good. I hope everyone who considers themselves a disciple of Jesus is enthusiastic about being so. But could a lot of enthusiasm cause one to lose his head, declare impossible oaths and promise things that cannot be delivered? I wonder.

The idea that anyone who did not follow I AM in the nation should be put to death is found in the Law of Moses. Today it seems harsh, little better than the jihads of radical Islam. If we dislike the Islamic practice of converting to Islam or be killed, how can we embrace the Israeli practice resulting from the Jerusalem assembly?

And what of its effects on Asa? It would appear he got carried away with his assembly. Everyone agreed with him, either wholeheartedly or not. When a king has no one to disagree with him, he will tend to get puffed up. Thus, twenty plus years later, when Hanani confronted his error, rather than humble himself, Asa threw the messenger in jail. This led to a downhill progression, where he oppressed his people and failed to seek I AM when he had a need.

Was the Jerusalem Assembly under Asa a good thing or a bad thing? All I know for sure is, before that assembly, Asa did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, and after that assembly he made bad choices and was chastised by God’s prophet. The enthusiasm of the great assembly vs. the quiet affirmation of a person in a one-on-one conversation with God. I like the former, but I think I like the latter better.

Good King-Bad King, King Asa, Life Group lessons

Another Prophet Confronts Asa

Leave a comment

As I said in yesterday’s post, King Asa, when faced with war with Israel, sought an alliance with the ungodly Aram rather than muster his own army. The result was that Ben-Hadad, king of Aram, attacked Israel from the north and the Israeli king backed off from his border with Judah and turned 180 to fight the country he had had a peace treaty with. Asa then took the occasion to build up his own defenses: “[He] issued an order to all Judah–no one was exempt–and they carried away from Ramah the stones and timber Baasha had been using there. With them King Asa built up Geba in Benjamin, and also Mizpah.” [1st Kings 15:22-24] Never mind that the Law of Moses allowed certain exemptions from service such as this. Asa said no one was exempt.

Then came Hanani the seer to see Asa. This is the second occasion recorded where a prophet came to give God’s word to Asa. Azariah did so after the Cushite war, encouraging Asa. Might Hanani be about ready to do the same thing? Nay:

Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the LORD your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand. Were not the Cushites and Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on the LORD, he delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war. 2nd Chronicles 16:7b-9

Wow! This prophet doesn’t mince words. Asa’s use of reversal of entangling alliances as a means to avoid war was a bad thing, not a good thing. That phrase “the king of Aram has escaped from your hand” is a curious addition. At the time when Israel threatened Judah, Judah was not at war with Aram. But Aram was aligned with Israel, and Israel was about, so it seemed, to war against Judah. Might this have dragged in Aram to assist their ally? If so, Judah would have found itself fighting both Israel and Aram.

But it seems that was God’s plan. The prophet said Aram had escaped from Judah. God was probably intending to deliver Judah from those two nations, expecting that Asa would cry out to Him. Unfortunately, Asa did not cry out to the LORD his God. He proceeded with his own best judgment, which turned out not very good.

But a man can make a mistake and recover from it, right? Doesn’t that happen again and again throughout the Bible. Yes, so let’s see what Asa’s response was.

Asa was angry with the seer because of this; he was so enraged that he put him in prison. At the same time Asa brutally oppressed some of the people.
…..…In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was afflicted with a disease in his feet. Though his disease was severe, even in his illness he did not seek help from the LORD, but only from the physicians. 2nd Chronicles 16:10, 12

So it seems Asa did not repent. In fact he got worse. He imprisoned God’s messenger to him, then seems to have gone off the deep end, brutally oppressing people, and forgetting that I AM could help him in his illness.

A sad, sad story. Even though Asa did great things, won great military victories, instituted great religious reforms, had great personal piety, and was honored by the people at his death, Asa’s last days do not reflect what they could have and should have been.

What caused this? How does a man go from the pinnacle of success to the depths of bad behavior? I’m going to explore this in the next post.

Good King-Bad King, Life Group lessons

Asa responds to a threat from Israel

Leave a comment

In the thirty-sixth year of King Asa’s reign, neighboring Israel began to make threats. The king of Israel “went up against Judah and fortified Ramah to prevent anyone from leaving or entering the territory of Asa king of Judah.”

So, the wars with Israel that had plagued his father and grandfather finally reached Asa’s house.

We have a bit of trouble with the timeline here. The scriptures, both 1st Kings 15 and 2nd Chronicles 16, say Baasha was the king of Israel who fortified Ramah. However, 1st Kings 15:33 reads, “In the third year of Asa king of Judah, Baasha son of Ahijah became king of all Israel in Tirzah, and he reigned twenty-four years.” So, in the thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign, Baasha had been dead for nine years! Something is obviously wrong. The commentaries I read suggest that the 36 years should be counted from the division of Judah and Israel. That would put this event half-way through Baasha’s reign. I have another possible solution: It wasn’t Baasha who was king then; it was Omri. He became king in the 31st year of Asa and reigned twelve years. Why would the two Bible books say Baasha when it was Omri? One was source for the other, and the writer of the first simply got it wrong, confused over his kings. Either the year is wrong, or the king is wrong. I suppose it is also possible that a copyist, very early in the history of the original document, may have written “36” when the original said “26”, and that error was perpetuated. We’ll never know.

All that is tangential to the story. The real story is how Asa faced this new threat, only four miles from Jerusalem:

Asa then took the silver and gold out of the treasuries of the LORD’s temple and of his own palace and sent it to Ben-Hadad king of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus. “Let there be a treaty between me and you,” he said, “as there was between my father and your father. See, I am sending you silver and gold. Now break your treaty with Baasha king of Israel so he will withdraw from me.” 2nd Chronicles 16:2-3

Huh? Israel threatens by building a border fort and closing the border, probably as a precursor to renewed open war, and you go to Israel’s treaty partner for help, stripping the public and private wealth to do so? Something is wrong here. Gone are the days, twenty or so years previously, when faced with a graver threat from superior Cushite forces Asa prayed, “LORD, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, O LORD our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. O LORD, you are our God; do not let man prevail against you.” God answered those prayers and gave Judah victory. Could not the similar crying out to God bring the same results now?

What motivated Asa to take this course of action? He was now about 55 years old, and had reigned 35 years. He had seen war before, both with the Cushites and probably some other border skirmishes with Israel, but most of his years he had been at peace with his neighbors. Had he lost his nerve for war, perhaps never really having it in the first place? Did he figure he could use worldly wealth to hire someone else to fight for him? In other words, did he buy off Aram because he could?

An interesting question in trying to figure out why a good king would take this route. Or would some people consider this a good move, a smart move by Asa? To save his army from fighting a war was a good thing, no? Perhaps, in twenty years of peace, Asa had disbanded most of his army and he would have to recruit, equip, and train them all over again. Perhaps he felt he didn’t have time for this, that the threat from Israel was more imminent.

Whatever his motives, Asa chose the route of entangling alliances to solve his military problem. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is nothing new in the Middle East. Here we see it employed in antiquity.

Tomorrow we’ll see what God’s prophet said to Asa about this, and how he reacted.

Good King-Bad King, Life Group lessons

The High Places in Judah

2 Comments

After conducting religious reforms as a young man, after he defeated the Cushites and Libyans with God’s help, after the encouragement from Azariah the prophet, King Asa went back to his religious reforms. 2nd Chronicles has this to say about this second round of reforms.

When Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Azariah…he took courage. He removed the detestable idols from the whole land of Judah and Benjamin and from the towns he had captured in the hills of Ephraim. He repaired the altar of the LORD that was in front of the LORD’s temple.
…..…King Asa also deposed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother, because she had made a repulsive Asherah pole. Asa cut the pole down, broke it up and burned it in the Kidron Valley. Although he did not remove the high places from Israel, Asa’s heart was fully committed to the LORD all his life. He brought into the temple of God the silver and gold and the articles that he and his father had dedicated. 2nd Chronicles 15:8, 16-18

Well, quite a bit of reform. Initially, as described in yesterday’s post, Asa had: expelled the male shrine prostitutes, got rid of the idols his fathers had made, removed the foreign altars, removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones, cut down the Asherah poles, commanded Judah to seek the LORD. Now he goes about doing even more–except, he does not remove the high places.

This business of the high places is, I believe, a key to understanding Israel at this point. 2 Chronicles 14:5 says Asa removed the high places. 1 Kings 15:14 and 2nd Chronicles 15:17 say he did not. A careful reading of the text leads me to conclude that these are describing two very different events. At first, as a young man and a new king, Asa removed the high places. However, while he was busy with administering a country, building fortified cities, raising and training and equipping an army, and fighting the Cushites and Libyans, the Jews must have rebuilt the high places. So Asa, having been encouraged by Azariah, begins a second round of reforms. Idols–gone. Altar–repaired. Silver and gold–to the temple. Grandmother Maacah–deposed because she is a bad influence. Her Asherah pole–cut down, broken up, and burned. The high places–oh, not again! I just removed them (was it really a decade or two ago?).

This time he did not remove the high places. Why? He did it once. Why not again? What’s wrong with these Jews? They keep setting up alternate places of worship. Maybe they worship I AM there some of the time, but they also worship the other gods. I can’t keep up with it; I can’t keep removing them. And so Asa did not remove the high places this time around.

I don’t really find fault with Asa for this. Maybe I should, but I don’t. He should have removed them again, and again, and again, as many times at it took for Judah, Benjamin, and remnants of the other tribes to get the message. But he didn’t. Perhaps he thought there was enough worship of I AM going on at those places that they did some good. I don’t think he grew weary of well-doing. As I’ll write about in another post, the assembly he held in Jerusalem showed the extent of his zeal.

The high places exist today, not in Israel, but in America–places where we worship amiss, where we fall short of what I AM wants of us. As this post at The Path of Truth so well explains, the high places do exist. We tear them down and rebuild them, perhaps growing weary in well-doing. We need to keep removing them.