Biblical Scrabble & Finishing Well
I wish you could hear the conversations that happen in my head before I hit “send” on these letters. Admittedly, I have a high bar for them.
“It needs to be encouraging. But it has to be funny. And surprising. Bonus points for clever.”
I want it to make you laugh, make you think, really a win if you snort coffee once.
Then somewhere along the way…let the Holy Spirit lovingly land a quick one-two jab.
And since these letters tend to be an overflow of whatever God has been teaching me lately… let’s talk about a bunch of Old Testament kings whose names all sound suspiciously alike.
Lately my Bible reading plan has me hanging out with Rehoboam, Jeroboam, Abijah, Asa, Baasha…and about fourteen other kings whose names sound like someone lost a game of Biblical Scrabble.
The Old Testament can be tricky to follow. Sometimes my morning quiet time feels less like deep theological study and more like, “Lord…who is fighting whom, and why are there twelve people in this chapter with almost the same name?”
Stay Close
But one theme pokes at me every time.
Very few of them finish well.
It rattles me in the most unsettling way.
How does even Solomon—the man God Himself gave extraordinary wisdom—end up drifting so far? How do leaders who once trusted God wholeheartedly slowly wander away? And how do so many sons of faithful kings fail to remain faithful themselves?
None of their stories seem to begin with someone waking up and saying,
“Today’s the day I walk away from God.”
No…they read more like a slow drift.
One compromise.
One distraction.
One unchecked pride.
One day where “I’ll get back to God tomorrow” quietly becomes a way of life.
It reminds me that my greatest spiritual goal isn’t to know more.
It’s to stay close.
Not because I’m afraid God is waiting for me to fail, but because I know how easy it is to become distracted by life while convincing myself everything is fine.
It’s fine.
It’s fine.
Everything is just FINE.
Meanwhile…it’s definitely not fine.
That’s why I daily circle back to the same simple prayer:
Search me. Know me. Reveal to me whatever I can’t see on my own.
I don’t need to understand every Old Testament king inside and out (although it’s still on my goal card). I just want to be the kind of woman who is still walking closely with Jesus decades from now.
And I want this desperately for my kids. They don’t need to be impressive by the world’s standards. They don’t need to avoid every mistake.
But if they love Jesus enough to keep coming back to Him? If they have friends brave enough to tell them the truth? If when they’re one hundred and one, someone could honestly say,
“They finished well.”
I’d trade pretty much anything for that.
There’s a solid lesson hiding between all those impossible-to-pronounce names. The race isn’t won by starting strong. It’s won by staying close.
“Let us run with endurance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus…” — Hebrews 12:1–2
