Night of the dead… dead

Came across this today in my daily Bible reading. And there are people who scoff at prayer…

Hezekiah is in a world of hurt.

Sennacherib of Assyria (remember him from your fourth grade world history classes?) is about to begain a seige of Jerusalem. He sends his publicity agent to the front door of the city and proclaims that he is about to huff and puff and blow the city down.

Only, its not funny because he can actually do it.

Heze and his board of directors receive a letter from Sennacherib demanding capitilation and they are terrified. An emergency board meeting gets them nowhere. So the king, in desperation…

…went into the sanctuary of God and spread the letter out before God.Then Hezekiah prayed to God: “God-of-the-Angel-Armies, enthroned over the cherubim-angels, you are God, the only God there is, God of all kingdoms on earth. You made heaven and earth. Listen, O God, and hear. Look, O God, and see. Mark all these words of Sennacherib that he sent to mock the living God. It’s quite true, O God, that the kings of Assyria have devastated all the nations and their lands. They’ve thrown their gods into the trash and burned them—no great achievement since they were no-gods anyway, gods made in workshops, carved from wood and chiseled from rock. An end to the no-gods! But now step in, O God, our God. Save us from him. Let all the kingdoms of earth know that you and you alone are God.”       –Isaiah 37:14-20

Crazy prayer, huh? Would I have the guts to ask what he did? Would I believe that the response to my prayer would be dramatic? Would I have antecipated the outcome?

That night the angel of the Lord went out to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. When the surviving Assyrians woke up the next morning, they found corpses everywhere.     –Isaiah 37:36

Riddle me this: is it possible that the God-of-the-Angel-Armies would respond to me in that dramatic of a way?

Ice

One thing I’ve discovered since entering the world of smoothie making — without ice you can’t make a smoothie.

I know that sounds rather obvious; but it’s not that straightforward.

It isn’t easy making good tasting ice. It requires quite a bit of work and even some outlay of significant resources. Ice from tap water will make a crappy tasting smoothie. The Brita water filter people know this. They used to include a packet of Lipton Ice Tea in the box their filters came in and would challenge you to make a pot of tea with tap water and another with water through their filter. If you took them up on their challenge (I did), you would never go back to unfiltered water for tea or coffee.

Commercially, to produce good ice, you have to have a really expensive ice machine, an expensive water filter that must be changed every six months, a dedicated water line, continual cleaning… you get the idea.

Yet, without ice, you can’t make smoothies. Worse, good ice is not appreciated by the smoothie consuming public until you give them bad ice. THEN you hear about it.

However, with time, the public comes to recognize that something is very different about your smoothies.

Its kinda like faith.

Without it, you can’t imitate Jesus. It requires quite a bit of work and even some outlay of significant resources. It isn’t appreciated by the nonfaithee until you give them weak faith. THEN you hear about it.

However, with time, the public comes to recognize that something is very different about your faith.

And it makes all the difference…

Team Ubauna

I’ve already posted this over on G(i)FB(o) but I know that some of you are just plain lazy. So, to make it easy for you, I’m mentioning it here, too.

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