Reading Thoughts

I'm making my way through 1 Kings and the gospel of John right now. I noticed a couple of things this morning.

First, in the book of Kings I'm at the point of the confrontation between Elijah and Ahab. After three years of drought they meet up and Ahab calls Elijah the "troubler of Israel" because Elijah is the one who has prayed for drought to be on the land. The truth, as Elijah points out, is that its Ahab whose caused the trouble. As I heard that I couldn't help but wonder how many of us blame our troubles on someone else when we are in fact the source of them, but we refuse to see it.

In the gospel of John I'm reading the story of the Samaritan women at the well. After she leaves Jesus tells his disciples that there is a harvest that is ready that they didn't do the work for but they get to enjoy its fruits. As soon as he's done saying that we're told that many believe because the Samaritan woman tells them about Jesus. What is cool here is that the work of planting the seed of the gospel is done by a despised Samaritan and not only a Samaritan, but a Samaritan woman. It tells us about who God uses in his kingdom to spread the good news and makes us wonder when someone come to faith who actually did the work, while we get to enjoy the fruit.