What Joash Forgot

Joash was a good king, right up until he was not. The hinge is one funeral. While the old priest Jehoiada lived, Joash stayed close to the temple and did right. The moment Jehoiada died, the officials came flattering, the king listened, and everything Joash supposedly believed evaporated. He abandoned the house of the Lord. Then it gets worse. When Jehoiada's own son stands up and warns him, Joash has him killed in the temple courtyard. The text lands the verdict quietly and devastatingly: the king did not remember the kindness that Jehoiada had shown him. He forgot the man who had hidden him as an infant and saved his life. This is a story about borrowed faith, and how fragile it is. Joash's goodness was never really his. It was propped up by a steadying presence in the room, and when that presence was gone, there was nothing underneath. It is worth sitting with, because most of us have a Jehoiada, someone whose nearness keeps us honest, whose example holds us upright without our quite noticing. The uncomfortable question is what is actually ours. What would survive if the person who steadies you walked out of the room for good. Faith that lives only in someone else's shadow has not yet become faith. Joash found that out too late, and a dying man's words followed him: may the Lord see.