Pound for pound I would say that the weirdest person in the Old Testament is Elisha. Weird stuff just happened around him.
"Elisha Is Jeered 23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. 25 And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria."
What I find striking about this passage is the commonplace almost mundane reporting style. If we were blogging about a trip between Fredericton and Moncton we might mention the high price of corn at roadside vegetable stands in the same tone that our faithful biblical reporter indicates that 42 men get mauled by two bears (OK, I know the plausibility sensors are ringing on this incident but you must remember that people back then were addicted to cheap Kung Fu movies where the bad guys would willingly line up to get their faces smacked).
It would, as well, appear that Christians that travel are not always on their best behaviour. I, of course, like you all have been tailgated and passed dangerously by a maniacal person with "Honk if you love Jesus" bumperstickers (which is actually a quite clever way of making you NOT honk at a bad driver). It would appear that more recently the standards of Travelling Christians Behaving Badly has been raised by Victoria Osteen who apparently struck a flight attendant that got in her way down with hemorrhoids. It looks to me like a strange cross between Career Barbie and Harry Potter. What is that worship song we sing ... "Just Like in the Days of Elisha"?
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