Sunday, August 31, 2025

Today's Scripture
2 Chronicles 6:32–7:7

“Likewise when foreigners, who are not of your people Israel, come from a distant land because of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm, when they come and pray toward this house, then hear from heaven your dwelling place and do whatever the foreigners ask of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built.

“If your people go out to battle against their enemies, by whatever way you shall send them, and they pray to you toward this city that you have chosen and the house that I have built for your name, then hear from heaven their prayer and their plea and maintain their cause.

“If they sin against you — for there is no one who does not sin — and you are angry with them and give them to an enemy, so that they are carried away captive to a land far off or near, then if they come to their senses in the land to which they have been taken captive and repent and plead with you in the land of their captivity, saying, ‘We have sinned and have done wrong; we have acted wickedly,’ if they repent with all their heart and soul in the land of their captivity, to which they were taken captive, and pray toward their land that you gave to their ancestors, the city that you have chosen, and the house that I have built for your name, then hear from heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their pleas, maintain their cause, and forgive your people who have sinned against you. Now, O my God, let your eyes be open and your ears attentive to prayer from this place.

Now rise up, O Lord God, and go to your resting place,
you and the ark of your might.
Let your priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation,
and let your faithful rejoice in your goodness.
O Lord God, do not reject your anointed one.
Remember your steadfast love for your servant David.”

When Solomon had ended his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priests could not enter the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord’s house. When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down on the pavement with their faces to the ground and worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying,

“For he is good,

for his steadfast love endures forever.”

Then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before the Lord. King Solomon offered as a sacrifice twenty-two thousand oxen and one hundred twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the people dedicated the house of God. The priests stood at their posts, the Levites also, with the instruments for music to the Lord that King David had made for giving thanks to the Lord — for his steadfast love endures forever — whenever David offered praises through their playing. Opposite them the priests sounded trumpets, and all Israel stood.

Solomon consecrated the middle of the court that was in front of the house of the Lord, for there he offered the burnt offerings and the fat of the offerings of well-being because the bronze altar Solomon had made could not hold the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat parts. (NRSVUE)

Reflection

“It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view,” Bishop Ken Untener once wrote. “The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts. It is beyond our vision.”

The books of 1 and 2 Chronicles try, as best they can, to step back and take the long view. They were written a fair amount of time after the return from the Babylonian Exile — perhaps around the fourth century BCE — and look back at more than 500 years of Israel’s history for lessons and learnings about the present. In today’s passage, we pick up towards the tail end of Solomon’s great prayer dedicating the First Temple — which for nearly four centuries would stand as a symbol of God’s presence with the people and as a reminder that God’s “steadfast love endures forever” (2 Chronicles 7:3).

But, as the Chronicler is all too aware, the First Temple ultimately did not endure. This holy place Solomon dedicated would be destroyed, and many of those living in Jerusalem would be taken away, leading to poignant questions from those in exile: Where is God? How can we proclaim a trust in God’s love, mercy, and goodness when we are surrounded by loss and sorrow?

Those are the same questions many of us wrestle with in our own painful seasons. In times of grief and in times of hurt, it can be a struggle to see God in the midst of it all. And yet the Chronicler is writing from a time when a Second Temple was built, when the people came home, when hope was born anew. We may not have the same benefit of perspective in the moment, but we can take heart in hearing from someone who was able to take the long view, watching God’s steadfast love still at work.

Prayer

You are good, O Holy God, and your steadfast love endures forever. Help me to trust in that love even when I do not feel it, and help me to share that love with a world that so deeply needs it. Amen.

Written by Matt Helms, Associate Pastor

Reflection and Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church

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