DAY TWENTY-FOUR (2 Samuel 22:19 – 1 Kings 7:37)

How comforting to know that God “brightens the darkness around me!” (2 Samuel 22:29)

Love the testosterone and manliness of 2 Samuel 23!  Amazed that Eleazar fought so long that his hand literally stuck to the handle of his sword. Wow!

The whole counting of Israel (2 Samuel 24) and how God punished David for doing it will always baffle me. I’m not afraid to admit it.

It’s interesting to note that in 1 Kings 2:12, Solomon was in firm control of the kingdom, but after weeding out the potential dangers, verse 46 says that he was in full control.  Probably an interesting lesson in there for leaders.

If you were going to have 2 pillars in your life, the 2 mentioned in 1 Kings 7:21 would be good ones.

DAY TWENTY-THREE (2 Samuel 12:11 – 2 Samuel 22:18)

I’ve got nothing.  It was another blitz day and I didn’t take the time to make notes about anything I read.  These are the days when I trust that God’s word doesn’t return void, even from the personal reading of it.  There are plenty of meals that I’ve eaten in my lifetime that were less than memorable, but they all contributed to me staying alive.  Sometimes reading the Bible is just like that.

DAY TWENTY-TWO (1 Samuel 28:20 – 2 Samuel 12:10)

It dawned on me as I read 1 Samuel31:5 that if armor-bearers typically were killed if the king they bore the armor for dies in battle, then David would have died here.  Makes me wonder if, when David heard about this, he had one of those “so THAT’S why a got held up by the train” moments.  Interesting to look back and see how God has used even the negative circumstances in our lives to protect us from what was coming.

Twice – once in 2 Samuel 1:1-16 and again in 2 Samuel 14 – someone tried to impress the King with what they thought was good news and they ended up dead.  Discernment, discernment, discernment.  Something I need more of.

God is pretty creative.  2 Samuel 5:24 reveals another pretty strange sign of victory: the sound of marching in the tops of the trees.