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Seek His Face

            if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (II Chronicles 7:14)

          I know this is old news, but in October, I drove to Florida right after Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the territory between Pennsylvania and Florida. Some of the workers who went to help stayed in the hotel I usually stay in. Right after I got to Florida, Hurricane Milton came through, and I returned to Erie with a load of stuff, then went back to Florida to sell the trailer. I got home shortly before “snowmageddon”, when the plow crews couldn’t get secondary roads cleared even once in five days. While FEMA was doing next to nothing except getting in the way in North Carolina, the nation was summoned to step up to help Los Angeles, which suffered under the onslaught of wild-fires. Now, this spring, we’ve had smoke from wildfires in Canada (again) and floods in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC, Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas, and the Carolinas. I’m sorry if I missed some. I’m fairly sure there were more natural disasters, including tornadoes.

          The current flooding in Texas is heartbreaking, but so were all the others, or they should have been. And let’s not forget the riots, arson, and violence committed by humans.

          So, today’s passage is a call to war, of a sort. And I’m sure that some people who might read it will say, “Yeah, those people need to humble themselves, and pray, and seek His face, and turn from their wicked ways. But it begins with “if My people” not “if those people.” Some are likely to also complain that if everyone did what “we” told them to, but that’s not what it says either.

          This verse is about Christians doing what Christians are supposed to do. And the associated promise is that God will heal our land – because our doing what we’re supposed to be doing is healing to the land.

          So I’m going to give us a simple challenge. Today, ask God to reveal to you what it means for you to seek His face.

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