Leviticus 2

Something that stood out to me in this chapter is found in vs. 13.  "Season all of your grain offerings with salt.  Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings."  Of course this brings to mind all of the verses pertaining to us being the salt of the earth.  It was odd to me that it is such a big deal though.  'the salt of the covenant of your God' sounds pretty important.  Why didn't he just say salt?

Now for my really exciting chapter of the day.  I googled how to pray today, and after looking through a couple of sites, I stumbled upon one that lead me to 2 Chronicles chapter 20.

Random, right?

The author (of the webpage) was trying to show the contrast between our prayers, and the prayers of the bible.  Sadly, our prayers are often very self-absorbed.  Next time you pray, or hear a prayer, pay attention to how many times you hear the words 'we,' 'me,' 'I,' and 'us.'  We come before God asking that he solve our problems and aid us in our time of need.  Not that that is wrong, but wouldn't you get tired if your son/daughter only came to you when they needed something?  We approach God with open hands, and leave with our open hands still demanding blessings.  Our prayers often focus around our problem, stating and restating the situation and our feelings about it.  The prayer begins to be directed to the problem rather than to God.  A majority (i'd say around 90%) of our prayer is about our dilemma, with only a small fraction of our words mentioning God.  Put one of our prayers up against the prayer of king Jehoshaphat (i always thought that was an odd name) in 2 Chronicles 20.  The difference is in his constant and deliberate praise rendered to God.  Instead of focusing on how bad the problem is, he focuses his eyes, his thoughts, and his attention toward God.  Just imagine if we approached challenges in our lives this way.  We compile a list of all the reasons why our problem is terrible and horrible, but if we spent that same amount of time reading through the Psalms, or dwelling upon other stories of God's awesome and magnificent deeds our doubts and fears would be calmed.

Enough.  Jehoshaphat hears that there are three armies headed toward the land of Judah with the intent of destroying them.  Jehoshaphat was alarmed, so his first reaction was to inquire of the LORD, then proclaim a fast for all of Judah.  His prayer will be mine for the day:

"O LORD, God of our fathers, are you not the God who is in heaven?  You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations.  Power and might are in your hand, and no one can withstand you.  O our God, did you not drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend?  They have lived in it and have built in it a sanctuary for your Name, saying, 'If calamity comes upon us, whether the sword of judgment, or plague of famine, we will stand in your presence before this temple that bears your Name and will cry out to you in our distress, and you will hear us and save us.'

 But now here are men from Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir, whose territory you would not allow israel to invade when they came from Egypt; so they turned away from them and did not destroy them.  See how they are repaying us by coming to drive us out of the possession you gave us as an inheritance.  O our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us.  We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you."

I'll let you read the rest yourself. :)

-G