2 Chronicles 7:11 - 23:15

"I have heard your prayer and have chosen this Temple as the place for making sacrifices. At times I might shut up the heavens so that no rain falls, or command grasshoppers to devour your crops, or send plagues among you. Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land. My eyes will be open and my ears attentive to every prayer made in this place. For I have chosen this Temple and set it apart to be holy—a place where my name will be honored forever. I will always watch over it, for it is dear to my heart.

Every now and then I'm trolling along and all the sudden I read a verse that is VERY familiar. It's all of those famous verses that you see on ugly artwork at the Christian bookstore. Today's reading happened to have one of those passages in it.

In college several of my professors ingrained the statement - "Context Is King" - into us. It's to signify the importance of reading around a passage to gain it's full understanding. The one sentence in the above phrase that seems to be very familiar is - "Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land."

Since context is king after all I think it's important to know that the Lord proclaimed this to Saul after he dedicated the temple. The Lord went on to say that at times Israel would encounter plagues and drought. If and when this happened he urged them to pray and he would..."heal their land."

Now if a farmer was telling me that he wanted to pray for rain based off this verse I'd so go for it. Unfortunately this verse is often used to insinuate - "If Americans turned from their wicked ways God would hear our prayer and restore our land." Restore our land to what? The days of our founding fathers? The days of Eden? What? I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing that we want God to restore our land to the 1950's. It was after all a very good decade for America.

Now I realize that I'm speaking a little tongue-in-cheek, but I'm afraid we've placed a too much stock in this verse. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for repentance...but I'd like to see it happen for the restoration of God's Kingdom - not the pre-hippie pleasantville. I remember my Dad commented once about how there seemed to be just as much sin and evil in the world when he was a teenager (1950's) then when I was a teenager (1990's).

I think that's all I'll say for now. I better go to bed before I make more people mad.