Week 2 October 2025, Devotion Part 2

And he left the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, “Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you…” And he…took the yoke of oxen, and slew them… 1 Kings 19:20-21

The prophet’s cryptic counter-question, “go back again, for what have I done to you?” may leave us puzzled, but Elisha understood. God had already spoken. He outranked the family firm. His radical call required a drastic personal response. The fledgling follower now pulled off his own shocker. He killed the oxen on the spot, burned their yokes, and boiled a hearty stew for his plowing companions. Then he ran after Elijah.

This compelling story begs to be translated into our own conflicting loyalties and emotions. Where in my life must God insist on instant, dramatic obedience? When must I give my puzzled loved ones their first taste of my contradictory behavior? What ministry does He have in mind? Christ offers no blueprints, only His companionship.  Part 2 of 2

Comment: Today, it takes a trainee from several weeks to two years to become a certified meat cutter.  How long did it take to cut up 12 oxen and get enough big kettles to cook a hearty stew?  To me that implies they also had to raid mom’s kitchen.  It was Elisha who “slew” the main stew ingredient, but after he struck the first fatal blow to each doomed animal, his companions surely went to work and helped finish the job.  Did some of them whisper that cousin Reuben was job-hunting and would have been a perfect fit for the team?  Significantly, Elisha made a bonfire out of the wooden yokes in a dramatic gesture of burning the past behind him, in radical obedience to God’s call on his life.  If we overthink this whole thing to find some common ground that might suit us better, we surely underestimate the Holy Spirit’s capacity to spin the story directly into James 5:17, “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours…”   Therefore, Elisha was an ordinary human being also, and so were the unnamed 7,000 subjects of King Ahab, who had not kissed up to the Baal gods his wife Jezebel jealously worshiped.  Speaking of worship, a much more relatable concept, the Greek word “proskuneo” used in the Gospels and translated into English, means “to kiss, make obeisance, have reverence.”  Read Luke 7:36-50 about Jesus’ encounter with a sinful woman in the home of the scandalized Pharisee.  See how this strikes you, “Simon…you did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing me feet…Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven – as her great love has shown.  But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”   Lest I fool myself or others by boasting of my illusory specialness, the “foolishness of the cross” as espoused by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 is the secret sauce that makes for our desirable “witness stew.”  Verse 26: “For consider your calling, brethren, that according to the flesh,” not many were wise, mighty or noble.  God does His best extraordinary things with ordinary people.  1 Kings 19