1 & 2 Chronicles

I picked up the Bible this morning (Sunday, July 17) and started Chronciles. The first nine chapters or so are catch-up on genealogies from the beginning of time to King David. I felt I deserved a break after getting through that, so I'll go back and read the rest another day.
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It's now Wednesday. I haven't picked up Chronicles yet to continue it because I'm still trying to process some stuff. In 1 Chronicles 2:4, it states: "Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar also had two sons: Perez and Zerah. Now, I remember reading about this in Genesis (chapter 38). In short, Tamar pretended to be a prostitute and Judah had sex with her. She got pregnant and they had two sons. I really didn't think too much of it at the time, because everyone was doing something wrong.

But, as I read the bigger picture of the fmaily tree, I see that David himself came from this line. So, King David came from an incestuous relationship. (Okay, maybe they were not blood related, but it was his daughter-in-law) And, she prostituted herself, which means he solicited her services.

All that's well and good. It sheds light for me about David and Bathsheba. But, I know that Jesus came from this family line as well. And he was the illegitimate son of Mary and Joseph, conceived outside of marriage. So, we have Jesus, the illegitimate child from a family line that is rooted in prostitution and incest. What is that?

And then I got to thinking. Solomon, the heir to David's throne, the builder of the temple, the wisest king that lived, was a child of adultery. Sure, I knew all this before, but I never really thought about it.

So you can see, Chronicles is a lot to take in, and it's just a repeat. We'll see how it goes.
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Now it's Friday, around 8:30 pm. I've been thinking about Judah and Tamar all week, and I think I've made sense of it (at least for me). God new before time began how it was all going to work out, yet he chose to have David, a man after his own heart, to be King and come from Judah and Tamar's line. Then, he chose that Jesus would entire humankind via this same line.

That, and every other messed up person that I've read about so far leads me to this final conclusion -- God prefers to work through misfits, or screw-ups. Or, for those who don't like strong language, God prefers to work through people who regularly screw up.

Why do I come to this conclusion? Although I haven't gotten as far as Job yet, I know the story. He was a man who was blameless before God, and look what happened to him - bad times. But, look at all the people who sinned for a living, but wanted to have a reationship with God - he used them.

Paul wrote about his thorn that God gave him - when we are weak, He is strong. I've always thought that God can use us in spite of our shortcomings. Now I've concluded that God likes to use us because of our shortcomings. It is when we are weakest, he is strongest.

Now I can move on.
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It's Saturday afternoon. I can finally finish this post, as I read the rest of 1 and 2 Chronicles this morning. It was nice. The writer focused more on the David, Solomon and the subsequent Kings who obeyed the Lord than all the ones who disobeyed. It was nice.

I'm not sure I would have come to the prior conclusion that God prefers to work through misfits had I read Chronicles in its entirety initially. Even David and Solomon had their challenges, though they are not mentioned much here (i.e., David's indiscretion with Bathsheba, Solomon building an altar for the pagan god of one of his wives). All in all, a pleasant Saturday morning read. Now I have to leave my house, because I just had my floors stained, and it stinks like nothing else.