Jericho, and other ruins

When I was a teenager, I was part of an organization called Young Life.  We used to sing a song, “Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, and the walls came a-tumbling down, dooby-down, dooby-down, doo-wah”.  (Okay, so it was the 70’s.)

It was a fun song, and planted a little church history in our brains, I suppose.  The account is of the well-known story of the Israelites walking around the walls of this pagan city out of obedience to God, and on the seventh day, with a fair amount of trumpet blowing, the walls came a-tumbling down.  The city was captured and utterly destroyed, except for the family of one woman, a prostitute who had risked everything to help the Israeli spies.

Obadiah, the unsung hero

Ahab and Jezebel, now there’s a dynamic duo.  Ever notice that there aren’t a whole lot of babies girls named Jezebel?  Doesn’t take an anthropology degree to figure out why.  Here we are now in the time of the heavy duty prophet Elijah.  King Ahab and his lovely queen have been seriously thumbing their noses at God, even more so than some of their predecessors, and God sends a