Day 13- 2 Chron 13-36, Ezra 1-10, Nehemiah 1

Wandering Disciple

Slowly approaching the halfway mark, today's reading really started off with a bang. I appreciated the deeper stories and having more time with the kings of Judah that were mostly just mentioned in Kings. After hearing so much about the evil kings, it was nice hearing about some of the good things Jehoshaphat did, Josiah, Joash, Amaziah kind of tried... Uzziah did until he started doing really well and no longer thought he needed God, I really liked Hezekiah for the most part when he sent letters pleading his people to come back to God "Do not be like your fathers and brethren, who were unfaithful to the Lord, the God of their fathers, so that He gave them up to desolation, as you see, Now don't be stiff-necked , as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord and come into His sanctuary, which He has sanctified forever, and serve the Lord your God, that He may turn His fierce anger away from you." ... but the people laughed them to scorn and mocked them. King Josiah was lovely, too.
God asked a great question, "Thus says God, Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord so that you cannot prosper? Because you have forsaken the Lord, He also has forsaken you."
The surprising thing in Ezra was multiple Persian kings who were stirred up by the Lord, as their captors, actually commanding and funding the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem of the very people they had helped destroy for a God they didn't themselves believe in.