“This is what the LORD says: ‘I have healed this water.” ~ 2 Kings 2.21b
We look forward to worshiping with you on Sunday, New Life family! Last week, we started a new teaching series on lessons from the life of Elisha. We focused on Elijah’s impact on Elisha. We highlighted Elisha’s insistence, his focus and commitment, and his willingness to ask ‘difficult things” (2 Kings 2.9-10; 14). Elisha’s story is full of God working in miraculous ways and it reminds us of what G.K. Chesterton remembered in his autobiography, “what was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world.”
This Sunday, 7/30, we are going to look at some ways God was working in Elisha’s life. Specifically, God’s miraculous intervention at the natural springs around Jericho. We can read about Israel’s conquest among Canaanite tribes in Joshua 5-6 that dismantled Jericho. The ritual forms among Canaanite religion included an annual celebration of the death and resurrection of the ba’al – the chief active god, but also with that celebration came the idea that nature would be reactivated, as well. Much discussion in our own culture surrounding ideas of healing the land - healing the world, is apocalyptic in pitch and usually demands that humans stop using certain technologies to make way for newer technologies. Technology seems to be at the heart of renewal in a secular culture. Christianity is not anti-technology. It is for the healing of water, so that the land can produce for humanity, but just as the longing for a God that dies and raises from the dead, He is also the God who can heal the water - heal the land.
Walking with you,
Tim