After the priest died the princes of Judah paid homage to
the king. They accepted him as head of
the nation instead of God and His anointed servants the priests. They chose to abandon the temple. If you don't serve the Lord you will serve
someone, yourself or another. We must
have a king of some sort, whatever his or her title may be. Joash chose to kill the son of Jehoiada,
Zechariah rather than repent of his sin.
Zechariah, like Job, believed that somehow, some way, there would be
recompense for this act, a redeemer who would right the wrong. He believed God would not let this pass. He had his eyes set on that redeemer and the
truth mattered more than his life.
This is the day we remember in our calendar as St Stephen's
day. The day after we celebrate the birth
of Jesus the Messiah of the world we celebrate the man who was the first to give
his life for that great truth, reminding us of how we are to live, as though
this were the only truth that matters in the world, willing to renounce
everything else for the sake of that great truth that transcends all other
truths. Stephen was a man full of faith
and the Holy Spirit to serve tables so that the twelve apostles could devote
their time to study, prayer and preaching.
It always makes me smile that the man chosen to serve widows and
distribute food was martyred for preaching the Gospel. No matter what your gifts are, no matter
where or how you serve you are always primarily called to be an evangelist, one
who is prepared to share the Good News, the evangel. It must be the thing which gives you life in
every way and it must be the primary thing, that which you know better and more
certainly than anything else in the world.
Stephen never forgot what came first and that Jesus lived after death
and so would he and therefore had no fear of death.
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