love when He meets me right where I am

My children and I are doing a jaunt through world history this year. From creation to current events we are filing away facts and absorbing stories of the past that have shaped the realities of today. Susan Wise Bauer introduced me to (through her book The Well Trained Mind) an idea about memorizing facts like all of the Major Wars and the Egyptian Dynasties so that they have pegs to hang the information we are learning on. It has been a cool journey so far.

Right now we are reading the Iliad and Odyssey (a re-written version for children by Mary Pope Osborne) studying the Greeks, the Phoenecians & the Sea People. Yesterday we read about Israel's history, about King David and Solomon and how the kingdom was rent apart into Judah and Israel and how one was eventually conquered by the Babylonians and the other the Assyrians. The books we use are not Christian or Jewish in nature, in fact they do not seem to believe in any God in particular, let alone the one true God. They just present the facts. Yet they talked about the idols baal and molech. The high places that were required for worshipping their idols. King David and King Solomon. The very same facts recorded in the Holiest of books, were written right here in my children's history book.

I had already read Days 49 & 50 of Bible in 90 Days, but this morning I found myself flipping back to Isaiah 1. Reading as fast as my eyes would cross the line, I could hardly sit still. It is exciting to connect the dots from point a to point b. To see a why or a what unfold. I remembered reading in 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Chronicles where it tells the story of King Saul, of David who eventually became King and of his son Solomon. I read about Solomon's alliance with King Hiram, the very same Hiram we read about yesterday in our history book. He was a Phoenecian King, King of Tyre. This area was well known for their cedars, the cedars of Lebanon, that King Solomon used to help build the temple of Jerusalem.

But this morning in Isaiah I read and came to chapter six and seven. Tomorrow on our schedule is to cover the Assyrians and how they conquered Israel. And here in the words of Isaiah, here it foretells it. Chapter 8 is headed with this title "Assyria, the LORD's Instrument" SO cool!