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

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

    When Joram succeeded his father Ahab as king of Israel, he moved away from Baal worship, but continued to worship at the golden calves which Jeroboam had erected. During his invasion of Moab things went badly. So, he had Elisha called before him (it is interesting to note that Elisha was among the soldiers in King Joram’s army). Elisha asked Joram why he was not consulting the gods of his parents. The point being made here is that King Joram could not be bothered to call on God until he found himself in trouble of his own making. It was Joram who chose the route which the army marched. A route which had insufficient water for the armies he was leading. How often do we do something similar? We march out on a path of our own choosing without seeking God first. Then, when things go badly wrong, we call out to God to rescue us from our bad decisions. The key is that we should call on God before we undertake the campaign, not just after things go wrong.

    The rest of the stories are a series of vignettes about Elisha. They each have a “moral to the story”, a lesson we can learn from how God worked in each case. The first story is about a widow of one of Elisha’s fellow prophets. She desperately needed money. Elisha did not provide her directly with money. Instead he directed her to use a resource which she had and asked her to apply some effort. God then multiplied that resource so that she could use it to obtain the money she needed to survive. The amount of aid she received was limited by the amount of effort she put into the project. This is how God generally meets our needs, we will need to expend the effort to get started, but God will expand the results of our efforts beyond what we could have possibly accomplished on our own.