90 Days? Try 90 Daze! In case there was any doubt, between my Habakkuk post and now, the school year started, both the IV year and the Clovis Unified year. Around the Dixon house, it's felt like when you throw a toy into the bath. At first, there's a splash, some near-capsizing, and you wonder if it's going to sink or swim. Eventually, it levels out and floats on top, usually waiting for Lily to try to eat it. Similarly (in a manner of speaking), we've been slowly coming toward equilibrium after the start of the year. I ain't making any promises in terms of timeframe, but I'm going to take a shot at finishing up this blogging thing sooner over later. So, some thoughts on the uber-popular (!) prophet Zephaniah:1. Zephaniah has quite the pedigree. We learn in the first verses that Zephaniah is the offspring of a king. He's royalty, the prophetic Prince Charles...or Paris Hilton? Hezekiah, Zephaniah's great-great-grandfather, ruled the southern Kingdom for some 29 years. His story is told in 2 Chronicles 29-32 and 2 Kings 18-20, and you know if you've been following along that in those books you have your good kings and your, well, not so good kings. Thankfully for his decendants, Hezekiah was one of the former, for the most part. What would this mean for Zephaniah? For one thing, what a great legacy to come from, knowing that the midst of a sequence of nasty leaders, your ancestor got it right. For another, during his great-great-grandfather's time it was prophesied that the exile was coming. If I were a prophet, and if I had that little family nugget in my back pocket, it would help me to prophesy with boldness, trusting in the word of the Lord.
2. God really has had it at this point. Here's what God says in the first lines of Zephaniah: "I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth," declares the Lord. "I will sweep away both men and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. The wicked will have only heaps of rubble when I cut off man from the face of the earth," declares the Lord. Boom. In my margin I wrote "God is again going Noah on his creation!" Truly, the long-suffering, slow-to-anger Yahweh is reaching His limit in Zephaniah.
3. The Day of the Lord will be rough. Following from the above, Zephaniah paints a vivid and grim picture of the Day of the Lord. Wailing, crashing, plundering, crying, death. The verbs in that section are sobering. Here's a gem from 1:17: "their blood will be poured out like dust and their entrails like filth." Make no mistake, if the Day of the Lord is yet to come, let's be people who a. are seeking the Lord (2:3) and b. sharing the Gospel freely and often!
4. Praise God that He is indeed "mighty to save!" I don't know about you, but every now and then there comes along a worship song that is particularly moving for me. Right now that's the song "Mighty to Save." I have no idea if the writer of that song got the language from Zephaniah 3:17, but it's there! Enjoy the song here.