“…until the Lord finally swept them away from his presence, just as all his prophets had warned. So Israel was exiled from their land to Assyria, where they remain to this day.”

There are no guarantees that anything that we have come to expect will be here in the future. The newspaper business was dealt another blow last week when the New York Daily News cleaned house and let half of their reporting staff go. This made “the news” because it was another step in what we know will someday happen, that we just won’t have a paper copy of newspaper available. I write this as one who still subscribes to a paper version that get delivered each day and yes, I look forward to that time with the newspaper as I enjoy the serendipitous experience of receiving the same stories that someone down the street is getting reading the same paper. That is part of my love of the newspaper in that I am not being filtered by the last Google search or Facebook Like. I am worn out of being targeted and predicted, but I am also realistic that this is the way it will always be from now on.  And as Kurt Vonnegut says with passing, “…and so it goes.”  There will be no constant than other than thwhat is here today, will not be here tomorrow, or what is, will be a lot different.

Even what looked to be permanent, the land and people of Israel, God finally had enough, and swept it away.  It is not only probable, but for sure that there were leaders and people of Israel who would turn their backs on God with some self-reassurance that God would never allow them to be returned into exile or “swept away”.  This self-reliance and arrogance finally caught up with them. We can learn from this.  What God has given us, He can take away.  What He has entrusted us with does not come with any guarantees that it will stay the same.  In fact, we would be better off to approach each and every day as a gift from Him that we need to appreciate, honor, respect and dedicate back to Him.  He remains faithful to us, but we must in turn remain faithful to Him.

Reference: 2 Kings 17:23 (New Living Translation)