2 Kings 23

ALMOST INVISIBLE

“I’ll put it away later.” And there it sat. All day. And the next. A whole week. A month … and then no one even noticed it any more. It became part of the furniture. It was the ‘Thing’ that was just there. No one questioned it, felt the need to shift it, and there it stayed. I don’t know how many times that has happened in our house!

It seems like idol worship was a lot like that for Israel and Judah. Someone made an altar – and it was probably reasonably secret and discrete. Of course people got upset about it, but after a while, no one noticed that it shouldn’t be there any more. When there was one, it wasn’t so hard to build another, to bring them out more into the open, to build them closer to the temple. The more there were, the less they were noticed and the more normal they became. Altars to foreign gods became a way of life and the people almost forgot that they shouldn’t be there.

Until Josiah purged the land from everything that rivaled the worship of the LORD. He even destroyed the high places that Solomon had built, which were almost historic places by then.

What is it in our homes of churches that rivals our hearts for the LORD? We will probably have to look with fresh eyes because most likely we have stopped noticing it. If Josiah was here, what would he purge from our lives? Do we have the courage to purge and clean like Josiah?

May we be faithful to God this week.

With love in our Lord,
Robert

P.S. You can join in live to Family Matters on Monday at 7:30pm at https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/325545813  at 7:30pm NZ time on Monday 14th August 2023, to hear Will and Renee Patino discuss Mental Health and Faith in God.