This Week

We are reading:

• 2 Chronicles 35-36

• Isaiah 1-24

• Psalms 145

• Proverbs 7, 8:1-36, 9:1-18

Summary

This week we close out 2 Chronicles and begin Isaiah, and we finish Psalms and move back to Proverbs.

And we have officially crossed the halfway mark through our Bible in a Year Plan! Congratulations to those of you hanging in there week after week. You are certainly among God’s favorites <3

I’m thrilled to be moving on and starting Isaiah, if I’m honest. Isaiah is the prophet whose predictions foretell of Jesus the most, more than any other book in the Old Testament. AND we get the origin story of Satan. Isaiah pulls us out of reading a chronological history book and into the theological underpinnings of our world.

The first twenty-four chapters of Isaiah being covered this week are largely oracles of judgment against Judah, Israel, and the surrounding nations, interwoven with messianic prophecy. A nice poetic pick-me-up following the centuries of terrible kings we just endured.

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 187 — Monday, 7/6 — 2 Chronicles 35-36, Psalm 145

• Day 188 — Tuesday, 7/7 — Isaiah 1-4, Proverbs 7

• Day 189 — Wednesday, 7/8 — Isaiah 5-8, Proverbs 8:1-21

• Day 190 — Thursday, 7/9 — Isaiah 9-12, Proverbs 8:22-36

• Day 191 — Friday, 7/10 — Isaiah 13-16, Proverbs 9:1-6

• Day 192 — Saturday, 7/11 — Isaiah 17-20, Proverbs 9:7-12

• Day 193 — Sunday, 7/12 — Isaiah 21-24, Proverbs 9:13-18

Day 187 — Monday, 7/6 — 2 Chronicles 35-36, Psalm 145

• Chronicles wraps up with a summary of why Israel fell: the people kept mocking the messengers of God, despising His words, scoffing at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord was brought against his people.

• Chronicles ends its account of Judah’s fall with the decree of Cyrus king of Persia, allowing the exiles to return and rebuild the temple.

Day 188 — Tuesday, 7/7 — Isaiah 1-4, Proverbs 7

• Isaiah begins like a prosecutor’s opening statement, with the prophet representing God taking his own people to court.

• The charges are social and ritual — meaningless offerings, hands full of blood, oppression of the widow and orphan. The worship continues but the justice doesn’t, and God says he cannot stand the worship without the justice.

Day 189 — Wednesday, 7/8 — Isaiah 5-8, Proverbs 8:1-21

• The parable of the vineyard detailing how God planted a vineyard, tended it, expected good grapes, got wild ones is representative of Israel, and harkens back to Noah, while foreshadowing the same metaphor Jesus uses in the Gospels. It’s simply incredible how these books with different authors thousands of years apart tie to each other so completely.

• And then we get a glimpse of God’s Throne Room. We haven’t been here since Enoch! The mighty seraphim, with 6 wings, who use fire (hot coals) to cleanse the sins of man (Isaiah). Idk sounds like theological support for purgatory to me.

• Chapter 7 introduces Immanuel, a savior conceived of a virgin, once again foreshadowing Jesus. Matthew later quotes this passage in reference to Jesus. The original context is a near-term political sign to Ahaz while the New Testament reads a longer trajectory into it.

• Chapter 8 contains a bit of sharp relevance for the Capitalism and Glitter crowd: The Lord has given me a strong warning not to think like everyone else does. He said, ‘Don’t call everything a conspiracy, like they do, and don’t live in dread of what frightens them. Make the Lord of Heaven’s Armies holy in your life. He is the one you should fear.’”

Day 190 — Thursday, 7/9 — Isaiah 9-12, Proverbs 8:22-36

• Nevertheless, there is hope in the coming Messiah — a branch from David’s line, emerging out of Galilee.

• Proverbs 8 is Lady Wisdom speaking about her own origins: “I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be.” She was there at creation, beside God as a craftsman. It is interesting to ponder the relationship between God and wisdom, personified, as a separate entity — one highly sought after by esoteric mystery schools.

Day 191 — Friday, 7/10 — Isaiah 13-16, Proverbs 9:1-6

• Isaiah pivots to oracles against the nations — Babylon, Assyria, Philistia, Moab — while revealing the origin story of Satan. Here we read the infamous passage about the king of Babylon falling from heaven, which later tradition applied to Satan’s original fall. Once again the text has near term references that echo a much bigger picture.

Day 192 — Saturday, 7/11 — Isaiah 17-20, Proverbs 9:7-12

• Oracles against Damascus, Ethiopia, Egypt. The discussion around Ethiopia is unusual as it ends not with destruction but with gifts being brought to Jerusalem. I find this particularly interesting given how the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has preserved biblical texts that have been lost to the western world. The commentary on Egypt is even more surprising, stating that Egypt, Israel’s original oppressor, will become a worshipper of Israel’s God.

• The nations surrounding Israel are all, in Isaiah’s vision, ultimately caught up in the same story — not as permanent enemies but as peoples with their own trajectories toward or away from God.

Day 193 — Sunday, 7/12 — Isaiah 21-24, Proverbs 9:13-18

• More oracles — the Desert by the Sea (Babylon), Dumah (Edom), Arabia, and Jerusalem itself.

• Chapter 24 begins the apocalyptic climax of this opening section — the earth laid waste, scattered, the earth staggers like a drunk, its transgression lies heavy on it, the floodgates of heaven are opened. It is the covenant curses of Deuteronomy extended to cosmic scale. All of creation feels the consequences of faithlessness.

• And yet, at the end of the devastation, a remnant singing from the west and the east and the sea, glorifying God. The darkness and destruction is real, and the song of God’s glory persists anyway.

What are you thinking about this week — Isaiah's call, the Immanuel prophecy, the origin of Satan, or Lady Wisdom at creation? Let me know below.

I get DMs and emails every week begging me for a savior.

“How did you figure that out?”

“Who helped you with that?”

“Can you recommend a practitioner for X?”

And, to cut to the chase, I just can’t give recommendations like this.

Actually, I could, but I won’t.

You don’t need a doctor. You need yourself.

I used to give recommendations, sparingly, and while there are certainly doctors and practitioners I trust with various issues, I don’t work closely with any of them and I just can’t in good conscience make these kinds of recommendations anymore. And as much as I don’t know if a particular doctor is right for you, I don’t know if you are a good patient for them.

Because, first of all, I don’t know what you need a doctor for, I don’t know what you’re willing to do yourself, I don’t know your gaps in knowledge, I don’t know your expectations, and I don’t know what precisely you need out of a doctor/practitioner relationship.

Are you looking for labs? Diagnoses? Prescriptions?

Asking someone for a recommendation on a doctor implies all sorts of underlying understanding that, frankly, I by and large do not agree with.

And if you are approaching a doctor or practitioner with the attitude that they may finally heal you once and for all, you are very likely to be disappointed.

Because the person who healed me is me.

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The Savior Problem

More importantly than a practitioner recommendation, I think most people with chronic illness need to get it out of their heads that a doctor is going to solve all their problems.

Doctors who operate in the realm of insurance have about 4 minutes to meet with you and treat you within the bounds of whatever specific ICD-10 code you fall under.

And if your labs are “normal,” well, God help you, because there is no place for you in the modern medical system.

I see it every day and I lived inside that hope for decades — cycling through specialists, waiting rooms, referrals that went nowhere, and the slow-burn infuriation of being told your labs are normal while your body is clearly not. Even on the holistic side — from bad reactions to acupuncture to practitioners who claim it’s all metals, or candida, or Epstein-Barr, or Lyme.

Here’s the truth that our culture doesn’t want to admit: a doctor is not designed to heal you.

That is not their role. That is not what they’re trained to do. Despite the way we’ve been conditioned — by hospitals, by pharmaceutical advertising, by the entire cultural mythology of the white coat — there is no precedent in the complex chronic illness world for one doctor becoming the source of all healing. (That’s the role of another Guy, one I am not discussing in this article but who obviously permeates the rest of my work.)

Most doctors are not brilliant saviors. They are not trained in root cause medicine. Most are not even educated in preventative medicine. They are not educated in the basic terrain-level factors that actually determine health: mineral status, mitochondrial function, nervous system regulation, gut ecology, connective tissue integrity. And there is absolutely no way they can cover any of that in their allotted time per patient. They are trained to identify acute disease, manage acute symptoms, and — in the chronic illness space — manage those symptoms indefinitely, often with medications that introduce new variables, creating new symptoms and syndromes, without ever addressing the underlying root cause issues.

If you’re approaching a doctor or practitioner with the attitude that they might finally heal you once and for all, you are probably going to be very disappointed.

There may be a brilliant specialist who finally gave you the diagnosis you’d been seeking for years, or who saved your grandmother’s life in an acute situation. I’m not saying doctors aren’t useful. They absolutely are — for very specific things.

But if you have complex chronic illness, a particular doctor is not going to heal you.

Anybody who DMs me asking me for a doctor or practitioner most likely has a much greater need: to take radical responsibility for healing themselves.

Radical Responsibility Is Not Optional

I know that’s not what you want to hear. I know it’s not what I wanted to hear either.

But our medical system was never built to do what you’re asking it to do. We’ve been trained since birth to hand our bodies to credentialed strangers and trust them to have answers that, in the chronic illness space specifically, they largely do not have.

Understanding and admitting that is the first step in getting better.

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Thanks for joining me here at Capitalism & Glitter!

My favorite credit card, the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, is currently offering the highest sign up bonus they’ve ever offered of 100,000 points. This is a limited time offer and they haven’t announced when it will end, so it could be revoked at any time.

This is one of just two credit cards I personally own. While many people cycle through many credit cards to earn sign-up bonuses and accrue literally millions of points, I accomplish a good amount of credit card travel hacking with just two cards.

The annual fee is $95 and the required spend is $5,000 in three months. A sign up bonus this high was last available summer of 2025, and before that it hadn’t been available since 2021. The bonus is usually 60,000 points. The current bonus of 100,000 points is the equivalent of $2,000+ in travel credit on partner airlines and hotel chains, or can simply be cashed out for $1,000 cash.

If you want to learn more about my thoughts on financial literacy and credit card travel hacking, I discussed these topics at length in previous articles.

Are there other aspects of financial literacy you want to see discussed here on Capitalism & Glitter? Let me know and that topic may end up in a future article.

Last Week

Whoops! I missed last week. But we read:

• 2 Kings 7-17

• Hosea 1-14

• Amos 1-9

• Psalms 127, 101, 103, 108, 109, 110, 122

This Week

We are reading:

• Jonah 1-4

• Micah 1-7

• 2 Kings 18-25

• 2 Chronicles 29-34

• Psalms 124, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144

Summary

I missed last week. We continued reading through 2 Kings and got insight from two prophets: Hosea and Amos. The northern kingdom of Israel continued its slow-motion collapse despite the prophets who were trying to stop it.

We open this week with the most famous reluctant prophet in the Bible: Jonah. A man so opposed to his assignment that he tries to sail away in the opposite direction and promptly gets swallowed by a whale — who takes him exactly where he’s supposed to go.

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Last Week

My quick thoughts on last week:

2 Kings 7-17

• We witness the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel with the common pattern — anointed kingship, turning away from God, corruption leads to failure.

• Jehu is anointed king of Israel with a specific mandate to destroy the house of Ahab, killing King Joram, Ahaziah, and Jezebel, avenging the deaths of the prophets that Jezebel had killed.

• Joash repairs the temple, which had fallen into disrepair.

• Elisha dies — and the power of the prophet continues from the grave.

• Finally, Assyria invades, Samaria falls after a three-year siege, and the people of Israel are deported. The northern ten tribes disappear from history as a coherent nation.

Hosea

• God tells Hosea to marry a woman who will be unfaithful to him and the marriage, as told through this book, becomes the metaphor for Israel, an unfaithful wife, with God as the husband who keeps taking her back.

Amos

• Amos is a shepherd and a fig farmer from Judah who goes north to Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II and starts preaching about God’s judgment on Israel’s neighbors before turning to issue God’s judgment on Israel itself.

• Amos closes with five visions — locusts, fire, a plumb line, a basket of ripe fruit, God at the altar.

This Week

Here is the daily breakdown for this week from our annual plan:

• Day 180 — Monday, 6/29 — Jonah 1-4, Psalm 124

• Day 181 — Tuesday, 6/30 — Micah 1-4, Psalm 138

• Day 182 — Wednesday, 7/1 — Micah 5-7, Psalm 139

• Day 183 — Thursday, 7/2 — 2 Kings 18-21, Psalm 140

• Day 184 — Friday, 7/3 — 2 Kings 22-25, Psalm 141

• Day 185 — Saturday, 7/4 — 2 Chronicles 29-31, Psalm 143

• Day 186 — Sunday, 7/5 — 2 Chronicles 32-34, Psalm 144

Day 180 — Monday, 6/29 — Jonah 1-4, Psalm 124

• Just an all around great story with Jonah and the Whale. God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh — capital of Assyria, Israel’s greatest enemy — and preach. Jonah says no thanks and boards a ship going the other direction.

• God sends a massive storm and the sailors find out Jonah is the cause and throw him overboard. He is swallowed by a “great fish.” He prays from inside it and is deposited on shore three days later.

• God tells him again: go to Nineveh. This time he goes, gives a brief sermon, and the entire city repents.

• Jonah is furious. This is what he was afraid of. He knew God would forgive them and he did not want that for Nineveh. He sits outside the city hoping God will destroy it anyway. God grows a plant to shade him, then kills the plant, and Jonah is more upset about the plant than the city. The book ends with God’s question hanging unanswered: “Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh?”

• Jonah is the rare prophetic book where the prophet is the problem. It’s less about Nineveh than about what kind of God this is, and whether Jonah can accept it. I have a lot of empathy for Jonah because I, too, believe cities full of sinners deserve the wrath of God. But it is not I but God who decides who gets the Ninevah treatment and who gets Sodom and Gomorrahed.

Day 181 — Tuesday, 6/30 — Micah 1-4, Psalm 138

• Micah is yet another prophet warning Israel of the coming consequences of their widespread corruption.

• Micah details how the leaders, priests, and false prophets are exploiting the poor, taking land by force, and turning religion into a profit-making enterprise. He foretells that as a consequence, Samaria will be destroyed and Jerusalem and its temple will be reduced to ruins.

• He issues this edict not without hope, though. Micah pictures a day when all nations will stream to the mountain of the Lord, weapons will be beaten into plowshares, and everyone will be under their own vine and fig tree.

Day 182 — Wednesday, 7/1 — Micah 5-7, Psalm 139

• Chapter 5 is yet another of the many predictions of Jesus as the Messiah, prophesying that He will be born in Bethlehem.

• God brings a formal "lawsuit" against His people, summing up His ultimate requirements: to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.

Day 183 — Thursday, 7/2 — 2 Kings 18-21, Psalm 140

• We finally get a good king! Hezekiah is one of the best kings in the entire Books of Kings. Removes the high places, smashes the Asherah poles, even destroys the bronze serpent Moses made in the wilderness because people had started burning incense to it.

• Hezekiah gets sick and is told he will die. He prays, weeping bitterly, and God gives him fifteen more years.

• His son Manasseh undoes everything. Rebuilds the high places, erects altars to Baal, sacrifices his own children in fire, practices divination, fills Jerusalem with innocent blood. The longest-reigning king of Judah — fifty-five years — and the one apparently most responsible for the eventual fall of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, our legacies are not just our own.

Day 184 — Friday, 7/3 — 2 Kings 22-25, Psalm 141

• Josiah becomes king at eight years old and reigns well. He issues sweeping reform, he destroys every altar, every high place, every idol, every shrine to foreign gods across the entire land. He rediscovers the Book of the Law. He reinstates the Passover for the first time since the judges.

• Josiah dies in battle. His son Jehoahaz reigns three months, taken to Egypt. Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah follow in quick succession, Babylon tightening its grip each time.

• Finally, Jerusalem falls. The temple is burned. The walls are broken down. The leading people are deported to Babylon. The bronze pillars, the basins, the lampstands — everything Solomon made — are broken up and carried away to Babylon. The kingdom of Judah is over.

Day 185 — Saturday, 7/4 — 2 Chronicles 29-31, Psalm 143

• Hey, didn’t we just read this? Chronicles’ version of Hezekiah is even more expansive than Kings.

Day 186 — Sunday, 7/5 — 2 Chronicles 32-34, Psalm 144

• Manasseh’s reign gets a bit more exposition in Chronicles than in Kings — Chronicles includes his captivity in Babylon, his repentance there, his prayer, and God’s restoration of him to Jerusalem.

• Josiah’s reform in Chronicles adds a detail Kings omits: Josiah begins his personal spiritual seeking at sixteen, and begins the physical reform at twenty, before the scroll of Law is even found. The scroll confirms and accelerates what was already in motion. The man was looking for something before he found the text. I love this detail because, in my personal experience, God will move us to find something before we think we are ready, before we even know what we are looking for.

HALLELUJAH we are just about finished with Kings and Chronicles! I am so excited to start Isaiah next week! #nokings

What are your thoughts on this week or last week’s readings? Drop them below or join us in the chat! Thanks to everyone keeping the conversation going.

The Inn at Death Valley has been on my bucket list for years, ever since I saw pictures of the 1920s era pool and learned that it remains at a constant 87 degrees, fed by an on-site mineral spring. Because the pool is constantly replenished with fresh water from the mineral-rich underground spring, there is no need to chemically treat it.

We arrived to Death Valley after a short 7-hour drive from Sedona, with 3 tired kids, during a dust storm so severe we were getting blaring emergency alerts on our phones warning us of potential white out conditions and urging us to pull over and wait it out.

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Fortunately, we were minutes from our hotel when the storm got really bad.

With the need to stay indoors during the dust storm, we decided our first stop would be the Ice Cream Parlor at the Ranch at Death Valley. It’s styled like an old-timey soda fountain. Unfortunately, as soon as we walked through the doors, the power went out.

Our family shared a hot fudge sundae, then went to our hotel to check in.

This area of Death Valley was established as Furnace Creek in 1890 by Francis Smith, a.k.a. the Borax King, who produced the famous 20 Mule Team Borax household cleaning product. Furnace Creek was the basecamp for the Pacific Coast Borax Company.

Borax is a naturally occurring mineral composed mainly of sodium, boron, oxygen, and water, and large deposits of it were found in the middle of what is now Death Valley National Park.

The Borax King saw a need — the largest borax deposits were far away from railroads — and provided a very marketable solution, using teams of 18 mules and 2 horses attached to a wagon to bring the borax out of the desert and into the hands of the consumer.

As the mining in the area declined, the Borax King pivoted to tourism. The luxury Inn was opened in 1927 with just 12 rooms initially, and the Ranch was opened in 1933 as a more family friendly property.

In 2018, Furnace Creek underwent a $200-million renovation to update the historic properties and become the Oasis at Death Valley (comprised of the Inn and the Ranch) — modernizing the properties, enhancing the dining and pool amenities, and adding a whole grove of date palms and 22 new casitas to the Inn’s previous 66 rooms (yes, the Inn at Death Valley previously had 66 rooms).

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A highlight of our stay in one of the new casitas was that it came with a golf cart rental to use getting around the property, because there is no car parking at the casitas. The kids loved it.

We arrived at our casita around dinner time — and the power promptly went out. It turns out the power going out will become a running theme of our overnight stay at the Inn at Death Valley. While they do regularly get dust storms, they apparently aren’t normally this intense and they don’t usually last longer than 20 minutes or so. Lucky us.

I should note that the Inn at Death Valley can be exorbitantly expensive. It’s a 4-diamond luxury resort located in an extremely isolated and harsh desert, an unmatched luxury oasis in a National Park. The price, especially for the new casitas — the most luxury accommodations for hundreds of miles — is steep, but it makes sense. If you are a bargain hunter (like me) you can find deals for the Oasis at Death Valley in the summer months, when tourism is down and temperatures soar (regularly reaching temps over 120° in July). We visited mid-May, and saw temps in the 80s and 90s, which was perfect (I could have handled even hotter tbh!).

Unfortunately, due to the dust storm and power outages, we weren’t able to visit the pool on our first day. We enjoyed a very dark dinner at the Last Kind Words Saloon, which was running on a generator due to the power outage. They had a limited menu given the situation and we were lucky to be the last order they took that night.

We spent the evening playing games by flashlights and glow sticks in our casita, and awoke the next morning to clear skies and a fully functioning resort once again.

Pool time!

Fun fact about this pool: It’s an unsuspecting biohacking device.

I discovered the Inn at Death Valley, and specifically the pool, when I investigated the claims that Borax has been used as a traditional medicinal remedy for over a thousand years and could have modern uses to aid in the complaints of those suffering chronic ailments.

Indeed, during the pandemic, the discussion around borax/boron grew tremendously, often getting labeled as misinformation.

So how do you sort fact from fiction?

Like this:

Boron is a trace mineral that aids in absorption, particularly with calcium and magnesium. It’s possibly an essential human nutrient in very small amounts, we still don’t know how essential it is to the human body as it is still being studied, but we do know that it helps with metabolism, brain function, and inflammation. It’s found in foods like fruits, nuts, legumes, and coffee.

And borax contains boron.

Borax has been used in traditional medicine for thousands of years to aid in digestive complaints, skin disorders, wound cleaning, skin treatments, mouth ulcers, eye conditions, coughs and respiratory complaints, infections, gynecological preparations, and in compound mineral medicines.

From Asia to the Middle East, Europe to North America, there is evidence of indigenous use of borax spanning centuries across all continents. Medicinal use of borax has its earliest documentation in ancient Tibetan and Traditional Chinese Medicine, later appearing in India in Ayurvedic medicine, and ultimately spreading from Europe to North America with the later colonization of the Americas.

It’s important to note that there is a difference between boron, a naturally occurring chemical element rarely found in it’s pure form; borax, a naturally occurring mineral salt that contains boron alongside sodium, oxygen, and water; and boric acid, which is a newer man-made compound that is a more refined, acidic derivative of borax (boric acid is also used in medical preparations today).

While borax has fallen out of favor in mainstream due to its danger of toxicity in larger quantities, boron and boric acid are both used regularly in supplements and medicine.

The claims that borax can be used to treat parasites, arthritis, inflammation, etc., which are regularly labeled as “misinformation,” are likely actually true as there are thousands of years of historic evidence of use. However, there are two major issues with this: one, borax is toxic in large quantities, and two, as a naturally occurring mineral it cannot be patented. So there is not a lot of money to be made in the medicinal use of borax, and in fact it may undercut the use of patentable pharmaceuticals by providing an alternative solution.

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Learning about borax led me to figure out that the stunning pool at the Inn at Death Valley is actually one of the world’s most beautiful biohacking devices. It naturally contains sodium, bicarbonate, sulfate, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and boron. Just stepping into this pool, you can feel that the quality of the water is unlike any other pool in the world.

You heard it here first, folks: swimming in this luxury pool is good for my health.

This pool is a true oasis in the desert, a stunning retreat I would love to recreate in my own backyard. The water feels smooth and luxurious as you step into it. The temperature is perfect. It naturally refreshes 4 times a day, every six hours, and is not chemically treated. It should be noted that the pool at the Ranch at Death Valley, the Inn’s sister property, is also fed by this spring and constantly replenishing, forgoing the need for chemical treatment (though it does not quite have the same vibe, lacking the giant palm leaf shadows tiled on the bottom of the pool).

After our luxurious morning at the best pool in the world, we went back to our casita to pack up and continue along our California road trip. On our way out, we took the golf cart for a little joy ride to explore the rest of the grounds that we missed the day before due to the storm.

Below is the tunnel you walk through from the parking lot to the elevator up to the lobby. It was closed for maintenance when we checked out, and I was horrified to learn that Alex willingly got into this rinkydink elevator the night before in between power outages.

Across from the parking lot is an event space, the Mission Gardens, where people can host weddings.

And that’s it!

Short but sweet and full of adventure, we really enjoyed our less than 24-hour stay at the Inn at Death Valley and can’t wait to go back.

This Week

We are reading:

• 2 Chronicles 13-28

• 2 Kings 1-6

• Song of Solomon 5-8

• Psalms 69, 70, 72

Summary

This week we’re back to Chronicles, watching the southern kingdom of Judah continue to cycle through a series of kings. They repeat the same pattern yet somehow never learn the lessons — faith in God brings stability, compromise brings war and loss, and repentance brings restoration. Over and over again.

One of the most interesting things that keeps coming up in Chronicles this week is the idea that physical illness (foot disease, intestinal disease, leprosy) results from a separation from God.

And then we’re back in Kings, where Elijah disappears in a chariot of fire leaving Elisha to pick up where he left off.

And we finish Song of Solomon, wrapping up the Bible’s most erotic book. A poetic testament to what it means to be truly devoted and committed in love — and giving us some insight into why some of the Israelite kings kept getting distracted by foreign women.

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 166 — Monday, 6/15 — 2 Chronicles 13-15, Song of Solomon 5

• Day 167 — Tuesday, 6/16 — 2 Chronicles 16-18, Song of Solomon 6

• Day 168 — Wednesday, 6/17 — 2 Chronicles 19-21, Song of Solomon 7

• Day 169 — Thursday, 6/18 — 2 Chronicles 22-25, Song of Solomon 8

• Day 170 — Friday, 6/19 — 2 Chronicles 26-28, Psalm 69

• Day 171 — Saturday, 6/20 — 2 Kings 1-3, Psalm 70

• Day 172 — Sunday, 6/21 — 2 Kings 4-6, Psalm 72

Day 166 — Monday, 6/15 — 2 Chronicles 13-15, Song of Solomon 5

• Abijah, Rehoboam’s son, goes to war against the northern kingdom and wins despite being outnumbered two to one.

• His son Asa is one of Judah’s genuinely good kings. He removes the foreign altars, smashes the sacred stones, commands Judah to seek God.

Day 167 — Tuesday, 6/16 — 2 Chronicles 16-18, Song of Solomon 6

• Asa’s late reign is yet another cautionary tale: when faced with another military threat, he makes a militarily good decision, but forsakes his reliance on God. He then develops a foot disease and once again seeks only physicians, not God, and he dies. The idea that physical disease stems from a disconnection from God is, of course, not lost on me.

• His son Jehoshaphat is another good king who makes the mistake of allying himself with Ahab of Israel, which costs him.

Day 168 — Wednesday, 6/17 — 2 Chronicles 19-21, Song of Solomon 7

• Jehoshaphat survives the battle but gets a rebuke from another prophet on his return. The alliances with unfaithful kings come at the expense of the credibility of Judah’s good rulers — tale as old as time, a classic Israelite move.

• A vast coalition of Moabites and Ammonites and others marches on Judah. Jehoshaphat’s response is to call a fast and pray publicly in the temple court. They march out the next morning with the choir leading the army, singing praise, and find their enemies have destroyed each other — thanks be to God.

• His son Jehoram takes the throne and his first act is to kill all his brothers. He had married into Ahab’s family and he reigns poorly. A letter arrives from Elijah with a specific prophecy about his death. He dies of a painful intestinal disease, two years exactly as described. Once again we see physical ailments resulting as a disconnection from God.

• Song of Solomon continues to contrast our readings of wars and illness and death with borderline erotica.

Day 169 — Thursday, 6/18 — 2 Chronicles 22-25, Song of Solomon 8

• We learn about more kings and the violence accelerates. Ahaziah is killed by Jehu. His mother Athaliah — Ahab and Jezebel’s daughter — seizes the throne and tries to kill all the royal heirs. A nurse hides the infant Joash in the temple for six years. Athaliah rules Judah for six years not knowing there is a legitimate heir hidden in the house of God.

• At year seven, the priest Jehoiada brings Joash out, crowns him, and Athaliah is executed. The crowd tears down the temple of Baal. Joash reigns well as long as Jehoiada is alive — but when the old priest dies, Joash reverses course, abandons the temple, and has Jehoiada’s own son Zechariah stoned to death when he prophesies against him. Joash is then assassinated by his own officials.

• Amaziah follows — good at first, then captures ten thousand Edomites and brings their gods back to worship — despite the fact that their gods clearly couldn’t save them.

Day 170 — Friday, 6/19 — 2 Chronicles 26-28, Psalm 69

• Uzziah reigns fifty-two years and is mostly faithful. But then he enters the temple to burn incense, which was the priests’ role alone. The priests confront him and Uzziah, furious, erupts in leprosy on the spot. He lives as a leper until he dies, cut off from the temple he tried to commandeer.

• His grandson Ahaz is one of Judah’s worst kings. He sacrifices his own children in fire, sets up high places everywhere, and when invaded strips the temple to bribe Assyria for help. Assyria does not help. In his time of troubles, he becomes even less faithful to the Lord.

Day 171 — Saturday, 6/20 — 2 Kings 1-3, Psalm 70

• We’re back to Kings, and back with Elijah. Two companies of fifty soldiers come to summon him to Ahab’s son Ahaziah. Instead, he calls fire down on them. A third captain comes and falls on his knees: “Man of God, please have respect for my life.” Elijah goes with him.

• While walking with Elisha, Elijah strikes the water of the Jordan with his cloak and it parts. They cross the river. Elijah asks what Elisha wants before he’s taken, and Elisha asks for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. Then the chariot of fire and a whirlwind come to take Elijah. Elisha picks up the cloak, strikes the water, it parts, and he crosses back. The spirit of Elijah is now resting on Elisha.

• Elisha’s first miracles follow immediately, with him healing a spring and dealing harshly with a group of youths who mock him.

Day 172 — Sunday, 6/21 — 2 Kings 4-6, Psalm 72

• Elisha’s ministry is extraordinary and strange. A widow’s oil multiplied until she has enough to pay her debts. A wealthy woman in Shunem hosts him faithfully and he promises her a son — she’s barren and her husband is old. A son is born, and then dies, and Elisha brings him back to life. A pot of poisoned stew is made edible. A hundred men are fed with twenty loaves of bread.

• Then Naaman, commander of Aram’s army, comes to Elisha on the advice of an Israelite slave girl, in order to heal his leprosy. Elisha sends a messenger to tell him to wash in the Jordan seven times. He does, and he is healed — convinced now that there is no God other than the God of Israel.

• An iron axhead falls in the Jordan and Elisha makes it float so they can retrieve it. Then the Arameans come to capture Elisha, but they are instead blinded and led straight to the capital of Israel. Instead of slaughtering the enemy army, Israel feeds them and sends them home — for a while. They ultimately come back and siege the capital, plunging Israel into another devastating famine.

What thoughts do you have on this week’s readings? We’re almost halfway through our Bible in a Year study — are you struggling to keep up (like me), or are you still full steam ahead?

This Week

We are reading:

• Mark 11-16

• 1 Kings 12-22

• 2 Chronicles 10-12

• Psalms 67, 68, 22

• Song of Solomon 1-4

Summary

This week we open with the final week of Jesus’s life in the conclusion of the Book of Mark.

Interestingly, the oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark ended at 16:8 — with the women fleeing from the tomb in fear. You’ll notice your Bible continues to Mark 16:20. Mark was the first written Gospel, and Biblical scholars widely agree that these passages were added later, likely by a scribe who was familiar with the later events (Mark 16:8-20 discusses events covered elsewhere in the New Testament, particularly the Book of Acts).

When Mark was first written, the author likely intended the ending to be a somber look at how we humans fall short of doing right by Jesus. The later Gospel writers ease up a bit on criticizing human failures in the face of God. While some people point to this as evidence of the Bible being manipulated, I personally don’t see anything particularly conspiratorial in the added passages — it just reads like a later Christian trying to round out the Book of Mark in hindsight with a more complete ending.

Then we’re back in 1 Kings, and the kingdom that Solomon built is about to split in two. His son Rehoboam makes one catastrophically arrogant decision and loses ten tribes in an afternoon. The north and south will never reunite. But, at least we get to meet Elijah.

The Song of Solomon threaded through the second half of the week is its own thing entirely — ancient love poetry, read in Jewish tradition as an allegory of God’s love for Israel, in Christian tradition as Christ and the church. Or, you know, a poem about two people in love. Possibly all three at once.

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 159 — Monday, 6/8 — Mark 11-12, Psalm 67

• Day 160 — Tuesday, 6/9 — Mark 13-14, Psalm 68

• Day 161 — Wednesday, 6/10 — Mark 15-16, Psalm 22

• Day 162 — Thursday, 6/11 — 1 Kings 12-15, Song of Solomon 1

• Day 163 — Friday, 6/12 — 1 Kings 16-19, Song of Solomon 2

• Day 164 — Saturday, 6/13 — 1 Kings 20-22, Song of Solomon 3

• Day 165 — Sunday, 6/14 — 2 Chronicles 10-12, Song of Solomon 4

Day 159 — Monday, 6/8 — Mark 11-12, Psalm 67

• Jesus enters Jerusalem on what we now know as Palm Sunday

• Jesus curses a fig tree that has no fruit, and clears the temple by overturning the money changers’ tables and driving out the merchants.

• The religious authorities are looking for a way to kill Jesus and He is now operating entirely in public.

• Jesus watches a rich person make a large donation and a poor widow put in two small coins and says she gave more than all of them — a commentary on the true meaning of giving and generosity.

Day 160 — Tuesday, 6/9 — Mark 13-14, Psalm 68

• Jesus sits on the Mount of Olives and describes for his disciples the destruction of the temple and the end of the age. This prophecy was fulfilled in 70 AD when Rome destroyed Jerusalem — which is likely when the Book of Mark was written, and why the author had a more apocalyptic view when writing his Gospel.

• A woman anoints Jesus’s head with expensive perfume. The disciples are indignant about the waste, but Jesus says what she has done is beautiful. So you heard it straight from Jesus — aesthetics in worship and in life have genuine intrinsic value.

• We re-read another telling of the Last Supper, Gethsemane, and the arrest. Peter was the most likely source material for the Book of Mark so this re-telling of Peter’s three denials, and his reaction at the end of breaking down and weeping, are details that probably came directly from Peter.

Day 161 — Wednesday, 6/10 — Mark 15-16, Psalm 22

• Psalm 22 on the same day as the crucifixion account in Mark is no accident. It was written by David a thousand years earlier and it references the crucifixion in details that are impossible to explain away — “they pierce my hands and my feet... they divide my garments among them.”

• Even with the additional ending to Mark, this Gospel ends abruptly and in a bit of despair — which is probably what the author truly felt in 70 AD after the destruction of the temple.

Day 162 — Thursday, 6/11 — 1 Kings 12-15, Song of Solomon 1

• Solomon is dead and his son Rehoboam goes to Shechem to be confirmed as king.

• The people send Jeroboam to ask Rehoboam to lighten the forced labor assigned by Solomon. He consults the elders, who tell him to listen. He consults his young friends, who tell him to come back harder. He listens to his friends — and loses ten tribes in a day. The United Kingdom of Israel lasts exactly three reigns.

• Jeroboam becomes king of the northern ten tribes (Israel) and immediately makes two golden calves, telling the people these are the gods who brought them out of Egypt, and sets up unauthorized worship sites so the people won’t travel south to Jerusalem. Hmm, I feel like we’ve read this story before.

Day 163 — Friday, 6/12 — 1 Kings 16-19, Song of Solomon 2

• The northern kingdom rapidly cycles through a half a dozen kings (hey! that’s the name of the book!), eventually landing on Ahab. Ahab marries the infamous Jezebel, a Phoenician princess who brings her gods with her, and the text says Ahab did more to provoke the God of Israel than all the kings before him.

• Elijah appears before Ahab and announces a drought. Then he disappears into the wilderness and God sends ravens to feed him.

• Elijah goes to Ahab and challenges 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Jezebel on Mount Carmel. The first to get their god to produce fire wins. The prophets of Baal shout and dance and cut themselves all morning, but get nothing in return. Elijah mocks them, saying, “Call your god louder, maybe he’s on vacation or in the bathroom.” Elijah drenches his altar in water three times and then prays one straightforward prayer, and fire falls and consumes everything. Looks like the real God won.

• Then Jezebel sends a message to Elijah: you’ll be dead by tomorrow. Elijah runs into the wilderness and asks God to let him die. Even a guy who just called fire from heaven is overwhelmed with worldly threats. God sends an angel with food instead.

Day 164 — Saturday, 6/13 — 1 Kings 20-22, Song of Solomon 3

• Two wars against Aram, both won by Israel despite being the smaller force — the text is explicit that God is engineering the victories to show that he is not merely a god of the hills.

• Ahab and Jezebel orchestrate a takeover of Naboth’s vineyard when he won’t sell his ancestral land; Elijah shows up immediately to issue divine justice from God.

• Ahab’s response is genuine repentance and God delays the judgment a generation.

• Ahab wants to retake Ramoth-Gilead. Four hundred prophets tell him he’ll succeed, but one prophet notorious for prophesying bad things for Ahab tells him otherwise. Ahab dies in battle, shot by an arrow between the sections of his armor. Dogs lick his blood from the chariot, exactly as Elijah said. Whew.

Day 165 — Sunday, 6/14 — 2 Chronicles 10-12, Song of Solomon 4

• We’re bouncing around between books because we are reading the Bible chronologically — so, fittingly, we’re jumping back to Chronicles, which covers the kingdom split we just read about in Kings, but then pivots to focus almost entirely on Judah, the southern kingdom. The north largely disappears from Chronicles’ story. The Chronicler’s interest is the line of David and the temple in Jerusalem.

• Rehoboam fortifies cities throughout Judah and then, once he’s established, abandons the law. The Egyptian pharaoh Shishak invades and takes the treasures of the temple, including the gold Solomon accumulated. Rehoboam replaces them with bronze shields.

• Song of Solomon is steaming up, I don’t even know what to say about it.

What did this week leave you thinking about? Mark's extra ending, Elijah saying Baal was probably unavailable on the toilet, Song of Solomon’s borderline erotica, or something else entirely? Tell me below or in the chat!

This Week

We are reading:

• Ecclesiastes 1-12

• Mark 1-10

• Psalms 8, 9, 11, 20, 21, 23, 29

Summary

This week we read Ecclesiastes and find Jesus again in the Gospel of Mark.

Ecclesiastes is believed to have been written by Solomon, written from the perspective of a man who had everything — wisdom, wealth, women, power — and learned it was all vanity. It’s as relevant today as it has ever been.

And then we’re keeping up with Jesus again reading the Gospel of Mark. Mark is the shortest, fastest-paced Gospel — it’s like a catalogue of the greatest hits. No birth narrative, no genealogy, Jesus just shows up and starts healing people.

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 152 — Monday, 6/1 — Ecclesiastes 1-6, Psalm 8

• Day 153 — Tuesday, 6/2 — Ecclesiastes 7-12, Psalm 9

• Day 154 — Wednesday, 6/3 — Mark 1-2, Psalm 11

• Day 155 — Thursday, 6/3 — Mark 3-4, Psalm 20

• Day 156 — Friday, 6/5 — Mark 5-6, Psalm 21

• Day 157 — Saturday, 6/6 — Mark 7-8, Psalm 23

• Day 158 — Sunday, 6/7 — Mark 9-10, Psalm 29

Day 152 — Monday, 6/1 — Ecclesiastes 1-6, Psalm 8

• Solomon catalogues everything he tried — wisdom, pleasure, work, accumulation — and finding it all hollow.

• I know these chapters are dark but I find them oddly comforting. Our troubles, while they may be hard, are not new. Suffering (especially with chronic illness) can feel so lonely and isolating, but we are not the first or only people to have suffered like this. Although arguably Solomon did have a bit of a unique situation, but still, hard relate to the ideas in Ecclesiastes.

Day 153 — Tuesday, 6/2 — Ecclesiastes 7-12, Psalm 9

• The Bible really does have a passage for everything. I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgic internet trends and how they make people sad, when Ecclesiastes 7:10 jumped right to the heart of it: “Don’t long for “the good old days.” This is not wise.”

• This one too, Ecclesiastes 7:16-17: “So don’t be too good or too wise. Why destroy yourself? On the other hand, don’t be too wicked either. Don’t be a fool! Why die before your time?”

• It may sound silly, but the entirety of Ecclesiastes is why I prioritize family travel and book nice resorts for us when I can (and leverage points when we have less money). There was a period of time just a few years ago when Alex and I were bracing ourselves for the possibility that he was going to be a single father to our little girl; to now have a thriving family of 5 is a miracle we didn’t believe was possible. Solomon had literally everything, but what good was it? I will praise God and enjoy my blessings every single day.

• Ecclesiastes makes blatant what should be obvious: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.

Day 154 — Wednesday, 6/3 — Mark 1-2, Psalm 11

• Mark opens with a bang: John the Baptist, Jesus baptized, Disciples gathered, lepers healed, all in the first chapter.

• Jesus immediately starts pissing off the religious establishment by healing people, forgiving their sins, and casting out demons.

Day 155 — Thursday, 6/3 — Mark 3-4, Psalm 20

• Chapter 3: Jesus heals on the Sabbath and the Pharisees start plotting to kill Him.

• Jesus appoints the twelve apostles, casts out demons again, and is accused of being possessed by Satan. He famously says a house divided cannot stand — a metaphor to explain how Satan couldn’t drive out himself.

• Jesus speaks in riddles, reciting parables that render him perpetually misunderstood.

• In one of the funniest stories in the Bible (imo), Jesus says to his disciples “let’s cross this lake” and then falls asleep in the boat while a storm approaches. The disciples wake Him alarmed that He’s going to let them drown

Day 156 — Friday, 6/5 — Mark 5-6, Psalm 21

• The Jesus hits keep coming: He casts a legion of demons into pigs who proceed to throw themselves off a cliff into a lake, heals a woman after twelve years of bleeding simply from her touching his cloak, and raises a twelve-year-old girl from the dead.

• Jesus goes back to his hometown and they can’t get past knowing him as a carpenter’s kid.

• John the Baptist is executed because King Herod’s wife hates him.

• Jesus feeds 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish.

Day 157 — Saturday, 6/6 — Mark 7-8, Psalm 23

• Jesus uses yet another parable to poke holes in the Pharisees empty faith, saying it’s not what goes into a person (food) that makes them unclean, it’s what comes out (their actions). A lesson for the wellness obsessed.

• Jesus heals a Gentile woman’s daughter, a deaf man, and feeds four thousand people with 7 loaves of bread.

• Jesus predicts his own death and tells his disciples what’s about to happen. Peter pulls Him aside and reprimands him for speaking so openly and Jesus doubles down.

Day 158 — Sunday, 6/7 — Mark 9-10, Psalm 29

• The Transfiguration: Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain, and he is visibly transformed, with his clothes become dazzling white. Moses and Elijah appear and have a conversation with Jesus, and then a cloud comes over them and announces that Jesus is the son of God.

• The disciples argue about who among them is the greatest. Jesus puts a child in front of them and says: this is what greatness looks like in the kingdom. 🥹

• A rich man wants to enter Heaven, but does not want to give up his wealth. Jesus says it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

What came up for you this week? Ecclesiastes, Mark, or both — share below!

This has changed a lot depending on the season of life I am in, so I will share a sample day in my life through four seasons:

1. Pre-diagnosis

2. Bedridden

3. Making Progress

4. “Healed”

Pre-Diagnosis

In my twenties and early thirties, while I did have sporadic symptoms, I didn’t have any diagnoses. I worked as a consultant and had a career climbing the corporate ladder, and I didn’t have kids until I was 33. My health issues started spiking in pregnancy, still undiagnosed, but didn’t hit me in a major way until I was 35.

This is the “day in the life” for about a decade that contributed to my health crash.

Morning

Wake up late. Immediately look at work emails on my phone, respond to anything I can, and clock the time I started working because I’m definitely going to be late getting to the office.

Throw on a dress and a blazer, grab my keys, phone, purse and head out the door to the bus stop. Skip breakfast. Order an almond/coconut/oat milk latte from my phone and pick it up in the foyer of my office building before heading up to my desk.

Afternoon

Grab a salad on my way to a clients office. Or, skip lunch because I have too much to do and no time between meetings to eat, plus my stomach hurts anyway. Get a second afternoon coffee, preferably with a client or coworker with whom I can discuss industry gossip.

Evening

Text my husband around 5 and try to time our commutes home so we can meet near the train station and walk home together. Convince him to pick up food on his way or Door Dash whatever the latest hip restaurant is in San Francisco/New York/Brooklyn/Oakland. Watch TV while working late, festering with irritation about my job.

Work a lot, make a lot of money, low key hate my day-to-day, spend a lot of time travel planning to maximize my PTO and enjoy the time I do have away from work.

Bedridden

Age 35, one toddler, early pandemic days. I was one of the first to have Covid and it set off a cascade of symptoms that got worse and worse until I had to take a leave of absence from work (I ended up retiring early). Friends and family don’t understand how sick I am, everyone is traumatized from the pandemic, no one can see each other, and my husband has almost no help working from home with a toddler and a bedridden wife he has become a full-time carer for, while our family has lost half of our income. I have little in the way of answers and have been told there is a 50% chance I will get better, and a 50% chance I will just get worse until I die. Not great odds. We are mentally preparing ourselves for the possibility my husband will be a single father to our only daughter.

Read more

This Week

We are reading:

• 1 Chronicles 23-29

• 1 Kings 1-11

• 2 Chronicles 1-9

• Psalms 64, 65, 66, 4, 5, 6, 7

Summary

This week we wrap up 1 Chronicles with David in his final days, obsessively organizing everything he couldn’t build himself: the Levites, the priests, the musicians, the gatekeepers, the military, the treasury. The man is dying and he is making lists. Honestly, I get it.

Then Solomon ascends the throne, consolidates power, and does what his father spent a lifetime preparing for — he builds the temple. Seven years of construction. Cedar from Lebanon. Gold everywhere. The ark finally in its permanent home. The presence of God filling the house like smoke.

It is one of the most magnificent moments in the entire Bible.

And then Solomon just throws it all away.

Starting with a foreign wife, a compromise, a high place built for a god that isn’t the God, and then another, and another, until a man who started by asking for wisdom is chasing every idol in the ancient Near East.

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 145 — Monday, 5/25 — 1 Chronicles 23-26, Psalm 64

• Day 146 — Tuesday, 5/26 — 1 Chronicles 27-29, Psalm 65

• Day 147 — Wednesday, 5/27 — 1 Kings 1-4, Psalm 66

• Day 148 — Thursday, 5/28 — 1 Kings 5-8, Psalm 4

• Day 149 — Friday, 5/29 — 1 Kings 9-11, Psalm 5

• Day 150 — Saturday, 5/30 — 2 Chronicles 1-5, Psalm 6

• Day 151 — Sunday, 5/31 — 2 Chronicles 6-9, Psalm 7

Day 145 — Monday, 5/25 — 1 Chronicles 23-26, Psalm 64

• David is old and makes Solomon king.

• The Levites are organized by division and assigned specific roles: overseeing the work of the temple, acting as officers and judges, serving as gatekeepers, leading the music.

• Interestingly, the musicians are named and are treated as a guild of prophets, set apart for “prophesying, accompanied by harps, lyres and cymbals.”

• These chapters cover all the duties and roles related to organizing and worshipping at the temple.

Day 146 — Tuesday, 5/26 — 1 Chronicles 27-29, Psalm 65

• More organization: the military divisions, the tribal leaders, the overseers of the royal storehouses and herds and vineyards and olive groves and camels.

• David assembles all of Israel and gives a speech telling them what God told him: you are a man of war, you have blood on your hands, and you will not build the temple. Your son will.

• He hands Solomon the architectural plans then turns to the assembly and essentially runs a capital campaign. He announces what he personally is giving (massive quantities of gold and silver and bronze beyond the national treasury) and asks, who will give themselves wholeheartedly to the Lord today? The leaders and officials respond with extraordinary generosity, giving hundreds of tons of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and untold numbers of precious stones.

• Solomon is anointed a second time and David dies.

Day 147 — Wednesday, 5/27 — 1 Kings 1-4, Psalm 66

• Jumping back a bit, 1 Kings opens with David very old, and we are back in a more detailed biography of interwoven personal tales that reads very much like\ Game of Thrones.

• Another day, another coup. Adonijah, David’s surviving eldest son, moves to claim the throne. Nathan the prophet and Bathsheba stage an intervention, and David publicly anoints Solomon, undercutting Adonijah’s ploy.

• David dies. Solomon consolidates power. Adonijah makes one more play and Solomon has him executed.

• God appears to Solomon in a dream, and Solomon asks for wisdom — specifically, a discerning heart to govern the people and distinguish right from wrong. God is so pleased with the request that he gives him wealth, honor, fame, and long life on top of it.

• The infamous judgment between two mothers follows immediately after. Two women come before King Solomon, each claiming to be the mother of the same baby. One accuses the other of having rolled over on her own child in the night, suffocating it, and then secretly exchanging the dead infant for the living one. King Solomon proposes an insane solution: the living child should be cut in two, with half given to each woman. One of the women agrees, and the other cries out in protest — proving to King Solomon she is the true mother of the living baby.

Day 148 — Thursday, 5/28 — 1 Kings 5-8, Psalm 4

• The temple building begins. Solomon sends to Hiram king of Tyre — David’s old ally and an icon of Freemasonry — for cedar and cypress timber. The sheer volume of materials, laborers, and logistics described are staggering.

• Four hundred and eighty years after the Exodus (12 x 40 years, just sharing because you know I’m always calculating), in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign, construction starts on the temple.

• It took seven years to build. Then, on a roll, Solomon spent another thirteen years building his own palace complex, also described in detail. The contrast in construction time is noted without comment, so make of that what you will.

• The ark is brought in to the inner sanctuary, placed under the wings of the cherubim. There are parallels to the Garden of Eden, as you will remember the cherubim are guarding the entrance with flaming swords. The cloud of God fills the temple.

Day 149 — Friday, 5/29 — 1 Kings 9-11, Psalm 5

• God appears to Solomon a second time. God is explicit in his communication with Solomon: if you walk before me as your father David walked, your dynasty will endure; if you turn away and serve other gods, this temple I have consecrated will become a heap of rubble. The foreshadowing is as thick as the cloudy presence of God in the temple.

• Solomon’s international reputation reaches its peak and the Queen of Sheba arrives and declares that his wisdom and prosperity exceed even the reports she’d heard. A foreign queen praising Israel’s God is exactly what this faithful kingdom was supposed to accomplish.

• Whoopsie! King Solomon’s riches and fame, and particularly the attention of foreign women, goes to his head. He winds up with seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. The marriages were political alliances, which was common at the time, however the consequence is that these wives turned Solomon towards other gods, just as God warned when he told the Israelites not to marry foreign women.

• Solomon built high places for Chemosh, Molek, and the other gods of all his foreign wives. The man who built the temple built shrines for idols on the hills outside Jerusalem, and he worshipped there. Big yikes.

• God tells him the kingdom will be torn away — but not in his lifetime, for David’s sake. One tribe will remain for David’s sake. The adversaries begin to rise.

Day 150 — Saturday, 5/30 — 2 Chronicles 1-5, Psalm 6

• Fun fact: Today is my birthday! Fittingly, it is also the feast day of Joan of Arc.

• We switch books again. 2 Chronicles begins at the same place as 1 Kings 1-2 ends with Solomon firmly established as king, but again skipping past the palace intrigue.

• The workforce and material quantities for the temple are described again, with some variations in number from Kings.

Day 151 — Sunday, 5/31 — 2 Chronicles 6-9, Psalm 7

• Solomon’s prayer of dedication again, and the cloud of God fills the temple.

• God appears to Solomon a third time in Chronicles.

• The Queen of Sheba again.

• In Chronicles, Solomon builds the temple and it is glorious and then he dies and his son reigns in his place. There are no foreign wives, no idols, no distraction from the core story: Solomon built the temple.

Whew, we’re almost halfway through the Bible, and working our way through the origin story of the secret societies! What came up for you this week?

This week we’re talking about Neeza Powers and catching up with our side yard project and new greenhouse.

Plus, another one of my favorite health hacks.

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Read more

This Week

We are reading:

• 2 Samuel 22-24

• 1 Chronicles 1-22

• Psalms 30, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 62

Summary

This week we finish 2 Samuel and begin 1 Chronicles.

We finish David’s story not with a bang but with a whimper — but we end up at the foundation of Solomon’s Temple.

Then we begin 1 Chronicles, which starts us back at the beginning with a retelling of our origin family and how we got from Adam to Noah to David, before diving back into David’s story.

1 Chronicles was written after the Babylonian exile, for a people returning home. It’s a lot of genealogy, yet again, but remember the books in the Bible were all separate scrolls of information, and this one was tying a somewhat nomadic people to a solid family thread so they could remember who they were.

David’s story is retold with very little scandal. Is this the boring Bible I keep hearing about? Because honestly these stories are anything but. In hindsight, we can see that David prepared everything for the temple, securing the kingdom so his son could build what he couldn’t. Moses vibes here — it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

A reminder this week: It’s ok to skim! This week is very same same, but different — it’s a lot of ground we have already covered, just from another angle. If you zone out, just come back tomorrow. It’ll still be here.

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If you’d like to support us, please consider a paid subscription.

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 138 — Monday, 5/18 — 2 Samuel 22-24, Psalm 30

• Day 139 — Tuesday, 5/19 — 1 Chronicles 1-4, Psalm 39

• Day 140 — Wednesday, 5/20 — 1 Chronicles 5-8, Psalm 40

• Day 141 — Thursday, 5/21 — 1 Chronicles 9-12, Psalm 41

• Day 142 — Friday, 5/22 — 1 Chronicles 13-16, Psalm 42

• Day 143 — Saturday, 5/23 — 1 Chronicles 17-19, Psalm 43

• Day 144 — Sunday, 5/24 — 1 Chronicles 20-22, Psalm 62

Day 138 — Monday, 5/18 — 2 Samuel 22-24, Psalm 30

• 2 Samuel 22 is David’s great song of deliverance and is nearly identical to Psalm 18, which we read back in Week 19.

• We then read David’s last words, including a catalog of his mighty men, followed by a census — so yet another list of men.

• David’s census taking is decidedly sinful (pride, perhaps?) and God lets him choose his punishment from three options: famine, 3 months as a fugitive, or 3 days of plague. David chooses the plague, and seventy thousand people die. David builds an altar and offers a sacrifice at the place where the angel of the Lord stops the famine — which becomes the place where Solomon will build the permanent temple.

Day 139 — Tuesday, 5/19 — 1 Chronicles 1-4, Psalm 39

• Chronicles starts from the beginning — Adam, Noah, his three sons, and their descendants. A piano teacher once told me that you’ll always know the beginning of a piece of music the best because you keep going over it every time you restart when you’re practicing. That’s what this feels like, tbh.

• Since we’re reading the Bible in chronological order, it’s interesting to go back and review from another angle everything we’ve read so far — a single unbroken line of a million stories that have brought us to this point.

Day 140 — Wednesday, 5/20 — 1 Chronicles 5-8, Psalm 40

• The genealogies continue. The Levites get the most specific lineage traced in detail because of their role in the temple.

Day 141 — Thursday, 5/21 — 1 Chronicles 9-12, Psalm 41

• Chapter 9 lists those who returned to Jerusalem after the exile, which is the whole point of all the genealogy.

• Saul dies, David becomes king. The sordid history is summarized into it’s final point — Israel is united under God’s appointed leader.

Day 142 — Friday, 5/22 — 1 Chronicles 13-16, Psalm 42

• David’s first attempt to bring the ark to Jerusalem goes exactly as it does in 2 Samuel — the ark slips and Uzzah steadies it and is immediately struck dead. But Chronicles adds a detail Samuel left out: when David tries to move the ark again, he makes a point of doing it correctly, with the Levites carrying the ark on their shoulders with poles, as the law prescribes.

• Chronicles is an accurate name because the details this author includes about the party post-ark arrival — the singers the instruments — vs what the author leaves out about Bathsheba, Tamar, Absalom etc is certainly a choice.

Day 143 — Saturday, 5/23 — 1 Chronicles 17-19, Psalm 43

• The Davidic Covenant again — God’s promise that David’s son will build the temple, that his line will endure, that discipline will come but love will not be removed.

• We are provided with a summary of the wars, but the Chronicler conspicuously skips over Bathsheba.

Day 144 — Sunday, 5/24 — 1 Chronicles 20-22, Psalm 62

• More Philistine battles. More giants are killed. The kingdom is secured.

• Then the census — but again, we get a different level of detail: in Samuel, it is God who incites David to take it. In Chronicles, it is Satan who does so. Honestly, this makes more sense to me.

• Whereas Samuel implies the future temple location, Chronicles outright declares it.

• In chapter 22 we have a story entirely unique to Chronicles: David gathering enormous quantities of gold, silver, bronze, iron, timber, stone for the temple and calling Solomon and charging him with the task.

What do you think of the differences between Chronicles and Samuel? Does the shift in perspective change how you see David or anything else? Share in the comments and the chat!

Nor COMT, or DAO, and they’ve probably never even heard of RCCX Theory.

The truth is they probably don’t know about these. Or they at least don’t know enough to tell you about them. Because the medical system was not built to help you understand how your specific body works; it was built to treat symptoms.

I used to “randomly” pass out in odd places. On the bus in San Francisco, while working at a cafe in the UK, on a subway platform in New York (while wearing a silk pencil skirt!). I’d go to the ER, they wouldn’t be able to find anything wrong with me, and they’d send me on my way. I barely saw any doctors in my 20s — with the exception of these periodic ER visits — but when I mentioned this to any primary care physicians they’d basically just shrug their shoulders and say, “You’re young and relatively fit, it’s probably nothing.”

After years of being told my symptoms were nothing, or anxiety, or “but you look fine,” I eventually landed on a cluster of diagnoses that explained nearly everything: Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Small Fiber Neuropathy, and more. Each diagnoses a new thread. All of them interconnected. And underneath all of it, a genetic architecture that mainstream medicine refuses to acknowledge.

This is actually how I found the research on RCCX theory — I started searching for the connection between all these supposedly disconnected diagnoses, as well as the connection between highly intelligent, high-achieving, Type-A mostly woman who had developed some sort of chronic illness.

If you’ve been following along with Capitalism & Glitter here on Substack or on Instagram, you already know about RCCX theory — the gene cluster on chromosome 6 that many doctors and health researchers believe links EDS, MCAS, POTS, and a constellation of related conditions in a single, heritable genetic predisposition. If you aren’t familiar, you can read more in our article here:

That piece of the puzzle explains why these conditions cluster together the way they do, and why you might be more sensitive and prone to certain conditions than 80% of the population. But it doesn’t explain everything about how your body operates on a day-to-day level. Why you’re more reactive to histamine than other people even with suspected RCCX genes, why stress absolutely wrecks you in ways that seem disproportionate, why certain supplements help everyone else and make you feel like you’re on fire.

That’s where epigenetics comes in.

Epigenetics

Epigenetics is the study of how behaviors and environmental factors switch genes “on” or “off.” Without changing the underlying genetic code, your body changes how it reads your genes and whether it expresses symptoms of those genes or not.

While you can’t change your genetic code, you can change how strongly that gene expresses — through things like diet, exercise, and managing stress.

Dr. Ben Lynch, a naturopathic physician, national bestseller, and founder of Seeking Health, wrote a book in 2018 called Dirty Genes that was instrumental in helping me figure out how to support my health. This gave me a framework for understanding seven specific genetic variants that have an outsized impact on how your body handles methylation, detoxification, mood, histamine, hormones, and cardiovascular function.

If you have a chronic illness that mainstream medicine has consistently failed to explain, this is a rabbit hole worth going down.

Before We Talk Genes, We Need to Talk Mindset

Genetics are not everything. They are a blueprint for your body that is influenced heavily by environment. Many people have a very restrictive mindset around genetics — “I have X so I can’t do Y.” But your genes are not a death sentence, and they are something you can work with, influence, and in some cases, change the expression of with epigenetics.

There is a line of thinking that says talking about healing, optimizing, or changing the expression of genetically influenced conditions like EDS is ableist. That it implies sick people are doing something wrong. That it puts the burden back on the patient.

I get it. I completely understand where that comes from. Years of medical gaslighting will do that. When doctors have told you for decades that your suffering is a personal failing — that you just need to exercise more, stress less, think positive — the idea of more self-optimization can feel like another flavor of the same thing.

But there’s a difference between your structural architecture and your biochemical terrain. And this line of thinking can lock you into a victim mentality in which you never try to improve your symptoms (and, in my experience, these people are most likely to lash out at others who do find improvement).

EDS doesn’t go away because you fixed your methylation. Your connective tissue is your connective tissue. What you can change is the inflammatory load on top of it, the histamine bucket you’re carrying, the stress response that’s been stuck in overdrive since childhood — all of which weaken already fragile tissues.

Your detox pathways that are running at 40% capacity while your environment demands 100%. Supporting your body to operate at its version of 100% is a critical component of maintaining health.

This is why many people have EDS or MTHFR mutations with no “negative” symptoms. This is how Michael Phelps has won gold medals while pretty obviously having the genes for Marfan Syndrome. We over-focus on the negative connotation of various genetics, but very rarely do we talk about the benefits of these mutations — gifting some of us higher intelligence, or increased swimming speed, or the flexibility required to be a ballerina or elite gymnast.

You can have a chronic illness and still understand how you operate. You can have a genetic mutation and not have chronic illness. You can be a person with real, heritable, structural differences and be someone who has agency over how those differences express themselves. Understanding your genes and healing chronic symptoms you aren’t destined to have isn’t ableist. It’s empowering.

Now. Let’s talk about the genes.

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This Week

We are reading:

• 2 Samuel 1-21

• Psalms 18, 89, 60, 51, 3, 37, 38

Summary

We made it. David is king.

What could go wrong?!

A lot, actually.

This week we read most of 2 Samuel and watch David go from the highest highs — dancing in the streets with total abandon for the Lord, giving his wife the ultimate ick — to the lowest lows — a near-refugee fleeing his own son in a coup and trying to keep the kingdom together.

The Psalms are again ever relevant, including David’s song of deliverance (Psalm 18) and the tale of him fleeing his own son (Psalm 3).

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 131 — Monday, 5/11 — 2 Samuel 1-3, Psalm 18

• Day 132 — Tuesday, 5/12 — 2 Samuel 4-6, Psalm 89

• Day 133 — Wednesday, 5/13 — 2 Samuel 7-9, Psalm 60

• Day 134 — Thursday, 5/14 — 2 Samuel 10-12, Psalm 51

• Day 135 — Friday, 5/15 — 2 Samuel 13-15, Psalm 3

• Day 136 — Saturday, 5/16 — 2 Samuel 16-18, Psalm 37

• Day 137 — Sunday, 5/17 — 2 Samuel 19-21, Psalm 38

Day 131 — Monday, 5/11 — 2 Samuel 1-3, Psalm 18

• News of Saul’s death reaches David via an Amalekite messenger who claims to have dealt the final blow himself because he is expecting a reward. Instead, David has him executed. Whoops! Shouldn’t have bragged about killing God’s anointed one.

• David is anointed king over Judah first, not all Israel. Saul’s surviving son Ishbosheth is proclaimed as the King of Israel, a rival — and civil war breaks out.

Day 132 — Tuesday, 5/12 — 2 Samuel 4-6, Psalm 89

• Ishbosheth is assassinated in his bed by two of his own men, who bring his head to David expecting praise. Again, David has them executed.

• David is anointed the king of Israel and captures Jerusalem, making it the capital and naming it the City of David — a culmination of the Exodus effort to flee Egypt and settle in the Promised Land

• David wants to move the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem but on the way Uzzah accidentally touches it and is struck dead on the spot. David is afraid and doesn’t try again for three months. When the procession resumes and the ark finally enters Jerusalem, David dances before the Lord with everything he has — and his wife Michal watches from a window, gets the ick, and never has children with him.

Day 133 — Wednesday, 5/13 — 2 Samuel 7-9, Psalm 60

• David, living in his cedar palace, doesn’t like that the ark is still in a tent. He wants to build God a house — but God says no, your son will build me the temple. This results in the Davidic Covenant — the promise that David’s line will result in an unconditional, eternal kingdom, culminating in the arrival of the Messiah

• For Jonathan’s sake, and as an act of covenant loyalty, David restores all of Saul’s land to his grandson, Mephibosheth, and insists he eat at the king’s table for the rest of his life.

Day 134 — Thursday, 5/14 — 2 Samuel 10-12, Psalm 51

• David starts slipping. He has an affair with Bathsheba (because remember, his wife has the permanent ick) and gets her pregnant. David calls her husband, Uriah, back from battle tries to get them to sleep together to cover it up, but Uriah refuses because his men are at war. David sends him back to the front and puts him in harms way so he dies, and David marries Bathsheba.

• Nathan the prophet comes to David and tells him a parable of a rich man who takes a poor man’s only beloved lamb rather than slaughter one of his own. David is furious at the man in the story. Then Nathan tells him “You are the man.”

• David’s child with Bathsheba dies, but they have another and name him Solomon.

Day 135 — Friday, 5/15 — 2 Samuel 13-15, Psalm 3

• David’s family falls into dissaray. His firstborn son Amnon rapes his half-sister Tamar, she flees to her brother Absalom’s house, who waits two years then has Amnon killed before fleeing. The estrangement between Absalom and David festers into a full blown political coup.

• Absalom begins systematically stealing the hearts of Israel. He sits at the city gate, intercepts anyone coming to the king for justice, tells them “if only I were made judge.” Finally, he launches his rebellion from Hebron and David flees Jerusalem with his household, barefoot and weeping up the Mount of Olives.

Day 136 — Saturday, 5/16 — 2 Samuel 16-18, Psalm 37

• As David flees, a man named Shimei — from Saul’s clan — follows along hurling curses and throwing stones. David’s men want to cut his head off. David says no. “Leave him alone; let him curse, for the Lord has told him to.” The humility of it is remarkable. He receives the cursing as discipline.

• Absalom enters Jerusalem and, on Ahithophel’s counsel, very publicly has sex with David’s concubines on the palace rooftop.

• Ahithophel advises Absalom to pursue David, but he listens to Hushai instead. While Ahitophel has a better plan, God’s plan is ultimately to thwart Absalom. Hushai then warns David to escape.

• David’s army wins in the battle in the forest of Ephraim, and Absalom, riding a mule through the forest, gets his famous hair caught in a tree — and hangs there. Joab drives three javelins through him despite David’s explicit orders that Absalom be kept alive. David is devastated when he learns his son has died.

Day 137 — Sunday, 5/17 — 2 Samuel 19-21, Psalm 38

• Joab confronts David and tells him his grief is demoralizing the army. David pulls himself together and resumes his kingship. The return to Jerusalem is complicated.

• A new rebellion rises almost immediately, followed by a famine resulting from a treaty Saul violated decades earlier.

• This week’s readings end with yet another battle between the Israelites and giants — and these ones explicitly have 6 fingers and 6 toes.

Whew. A lot going on this week. What are your thoughts? Share below and in the chat.

I didn’t know a single other person (besides my husband and daughter) who had Covid at that time. It was the weirdest illness I had ever experienced, and there was little to no information about other people’s experiences with the illness, let alone the aftermath.

What followed was 16 months, 13 doctors (most of whom I eventually fired), more than 100 tests, and a rotating cast of syndrome diagnoses — each one consisting of several symptoms I had on a small scale pre-Covid, and feeling like a consolation prize from a medical system that couldn’t figure out what was actually wrong with me.

Then, finally, a supposed root cause:

Lyme disease.

But I had never had a tick bite. I had no memory of exposure, no telltale bullseye rash — just a diagnosis that arrived like a missing puzzle piece, and immediately generated a hundred more missing pieces.

How did I get it? Unclear.

How long have I had it? Unknown — possibly my whole life, since it can be passed along congenitally from mother to baby.

Which means the question isn’t just when I got it. It’s how far back this line actually goes.

Symptoms I’d carried for decades, things I’d been told were just me — genetic quirks, familial anomalies like cherry angiomas, the same ones my mom has — suddenly reframed as possible Lyme co-infection (Babesia) markers that no one had ever thought to connect.

And when I started pulling that thread — where did Lyme come from? — I ended up somewhere I wasn’t expecting. Somewhere involving a tick biology researcher who spent his career sitting on a secret, a remote island with a classified history, and a pathogen that doesn’t officially exist in the United States.

The Fastest-Growing Infectious Disease You’re Probably Misunderstanding

The mainstream story on Lyme is tidy, woefully incomplete at best, and harmfully incorrect at its worst.

A tick bite, which can only transmit Lyme after 24 hours (false), only indicates Lyme if it results in a bullseye rash (also false), which can easily be cleared up with two to four weeks of doxycycline (false, false, false).

The CDC still does not recognize Chronic Lyme disease as a disabling diagnosis — despite the fact that a significant percentage of treated patients continue to experience debilitating symptoms long after antibiotics are complete. The medical establishment has a name for this that manages to acknowledge the experience while simultaneously dismissing it: Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome, or PTLDS. It’s a diagnostic category that essentially means we believe you had Lyme, we believe you’re still sick, and we have nothing more to offer you.

What the tidy story doesn’t address is the symptom range. Lyme disease can cause, or mimic, nearly every condition in the medical textbook — autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, every psychiatric diagnosis in the DSM, neurological symptoms from facial palsy to seizures, and cardiac complications including sudden death. Researchers have linked it to everything from anorexia, to suicide, to Parkinson’s-like presentation.

It also does something very unusual for a bacterial pathogen: it uses manganese instead of iron for its metabolism. Most bacteria survive on iron, and one of the body’s primary immune defenses is to sequester iron out of your blood and into your tissues precisely to starve out infection. Borrelia burgdorferi sidesteps that entirely. It’s a bacterium that has somehow, inexplicitly, evolved to defeat one of your oldest immune strategies before your body even knows it’s there.

Intergenerational Pathology

My mom was born in Massachusetts and grew up traipsing through the marshy wooded areas — specifically in the region just above Cape Cod, at the center of what the CDC’s own maps show as one of the darkest endemic clusters of both Lyme disease and Babesiosis, a co-infection that travels alongside Lyme and is caused by a malaria-like parasite transmitted by the same black-legged tick.

I grew up in Northern California. Which certainly has ticks, and there are claims that the CDC doesn’t count all the cases in the South and the West on their map. But, given that I never had a tick bite, the most likely origin of this pathogen for me is congenital Lyme transmission from mother to child during pregnancy. The research is contested (as most Lyme research is), but the mechanism is biologically plausible: Borrelia has shown it can cross the placental barrier. Stillbirths, miscarriages, and neonatal complications have been linked to maternal Lyme infection. Lyme Literate Medical Doctors are well aware of this, and they do not contest this possibility as they see it so often.

So if my mom grew up in the highest-endemic region in the country, and congenital transmission is real, the question isn’t just do I have Lyme disease? It’s: does she? Did her mother, who also struggled with health issues and dabbled in holistic medicine? How many generations back does this go? How many symptoms got explained away as just how we are — the fatigue, the joint pain, the neurological flares, the anxiety — when the actual answer was a spirochete that traveled down the family line?

As if that wasn’t enough, here’s what actually stopped me in my tracks mid-research and made me sit straight up in my bedridden state of existence.

Look at a map of Lyme and Babesiosis endemic zones in the United States. There’s a dense, dark cluster on the Eastern Seaboard — concentrated around southern New England, coastal Connecticut, Long Island, the Jersey Shore. The center of that cluster — the bullseye of the bullseye, if you will — sits directly around the eastern tip of Long Island.

Where, at the very end of that island, sits Plum Island.

The Island Nobody Wants to Talk About

Plum Island Animal Disease Center is a federal government research facility. It sits roughly two miles off the coast of Orient Point, New York — in the Long Island sound just off the coast of Connecticut, accessible only by ferry, historically classified, and officially dedicated to studying “foreign animal diseases” that might threaten American livestock.

That’s the official version.

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This Week

We are reading:

• 1 Samuel 11-31

• Psalms 54, 57, 59, 142, 63, 56, 34

Summary

This is a crazy week of readings — we get to witness a high-octane game of cat and mouse as we finish 1 Samuel, and we finally catch up to the primary author of the Psalms.

Saul becomes Israel’s first king, chosen by God, anointed and tall and promising — and he is exactly the kind of king the Israelites deserve, tbh. He starts out with genuine victories and potential, but pride and fear chip away at him until there’s almost nothing left of who he was supposed to be.

And running alongside this disintegration is the redemptive story of the rise of David as he navigates evolving identities — shepherd, musician, giant-killer, fugitive. He is impossible not to root for, and at this point in the Bible, we really need and deserve a hero.

The Psalms woven into this week’s readings are on point, traditionally attributed to David during the very events we’re reading about. You can feel David’s simultaneous fear and trust in the Lord palpably through these Psalms.

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 124 — Monday, 5/4 — 1 Samuel 11-13, Psalm 54

• Day 125 — Tuesday, 5/5 — 1 Samuel 14-16, Psalm 57

• Day 126 — Wednesday, 5/6 — 1 Samuel 17-19, Psalm 59

• Day 127 — Thursday, 5/7 — 1 Samuel 20-22, Psalm 142

• Day 128 — Friday, 5/8 — 1 Samuel 23-25, Psalm 63

• Day 129 — Saturday, 5/9 — 1 Samuel 26-28, Psalm 56

• Day 130 — Sunday, 5/10 — 1 Samuel 29-31, Psalm 34

Day 124 — Monday, 5/4 — 1 Samuel 11-13, Psalm 54

• Saul rallies Israel to rescue the city of Jabesh-Gilead from the Ammonite king Nahash — a genuine military victory that consolidates his kingship. At this point, he is functioning exactly as God intended. Will it last?!

• Samuel gives his farewell address as judge, directly reminding and warning the people that wanting a king was a rejection of God’s direct leadership. Uh oh.

• The cracks begin to show: Saul grows impatient waiting for Samuel before battle and offers the burnt sacrifice himself — something he had no authority to do. Samuel arrives moments later. “What have you done?”

• Samuel tells Saul his kingdom will not endure.

Day 125 — Tuesday, 5/5 — 1 Samuel 14-16, Psalm 57

• Saul’s son, Jonathan, pulls off a solo attack on the Philistines that routes the whole enemy army. He didn’t ask his father’s permission, but God honored the faith.

• Saul, meanwhile, makes a rash oath that no one should eat until evening, nearly getting Jonathan executed for eating honey he didn’t know was off-limits, and is only stopped by the people intervening.

• Once again the Israelites refuse to honor God’s commands to destroy everyone/everything when Saul wins the battle against the Amekalites but spares the king Agag and keeps the best livestock. When confronted, Sau insists he was going to sacrifice them.

• God rejects Saul as the King of Israel and Samuel anoints David as the next king of Israel. David plays the harp to soothe Saul as a tormenting spirit overcomes him.

• We don’t talk about the daily Psalms/Proverbs readings enough, but all of this week’s Psalms are likely written by David. Psalm 57 is attributed to David as he’s hiding in a cave — an event we’re getting to a little later this week.

Day 126 — Wednesday, 5/6 — 1 Samuel 17-19, Psalm 59

• Ah, the Goliath story. David beats Goliath, a giant, and it’s one of the most famous Bible stories, and maybe the umpteenth time giants are mentioned, and people still think giants are mythological.

• Saul elevates David in the aftermath, he becomes friends with his son, Jonathan, and his status as a rising Israelite celebrity pushes Saul’s affection into jealousy and then rage.

• 1 Samuel 18 reads like a twisted fairy tale. Saul, seeing an opportunity to put David in harm’s way, offers to marry him off to his daughter for the price of 100 Philistine foreskins. Much to his chagrin, David returns unscathed with 200 foreskins.

• Saul tries to kill David and his son, Jonathan, warns him, and he escapes. He tries to kill him again and his daughter, David’s wife, Michal, helps David escape again.

• The Psalms we are reading this week are written by David mostly in exile, as he flees the growing rage of Saul

Day 127 — Thursday, 5/7 — 1 Samuel 20-22, Psalm 142

• Jonathan learns that Saul does, indeed, intent to kill David

• David, now a fugitive, shows up in Nob and lies to the priest Ahimelech about his mission, gets the consecrated showbread and Goliath’s sword.

• David gathers a ragtag band of men and becomes their leader. The Saul/David story continues to sound like a Fractured Fairy Tale.

• Psalm 142 is David in a cave, with no one left.

Day 128 — Friday, 5/8 — 1 Samuel 23-25, Psalm 63

• David keeps fighting the Philistines even while fleeing Saul, protecting Israelite cities while he’s technically a wanted man simply because he is a man of God and it’s the right thing to do.

• Saul pursues David relentlessly through the wilderness, and one day, he even retreats into a cave that David and his men are already in, further back. David’s men whisper that God has delivered Saul into his hands, but David refuses to harm him because he has been anointed by the Lord.

• Nabal (a name that means fool) insults David’s men and David is ready to kill him, when Nabal’s wife, Abigail, rides out to intercept him with food. She basically talks him down from a massacre and reminds him of who he is and who he’s going to be.

• Nabal dies shortly after of a stroke, and David marries Abigail.

Day 129 — Saturday, 5/9 — 1 Samuel 26-28, Psalm 56

• David again has an opportunity to kill Saul and doesn’t take it.

• Running out of options and safety in Israelite territory, David defects to the Philistines, raiding enemy towns while pretending to raid Israelite ones.

• Saul, desperate before a battle he already knows he’s going to lose, visits the Witch of Endor and asks her to conjure Samuel’s spirit. This does not bode well for Saul.

Day 130 — Sunday, 5/10 — 1 Samuel 29-31, Psalm 34

• The Philistine commanders don’t trust David marching with them into battle against Israel and send him back. David and his men return to Ziklag to find it burned and their families taken captive by the Amalekites. His own men speak of stoning him.

• David asks the Lord if he should pursue the Amalekites and get the wives, children, and stuff back, God says yes, and David and his men pursue and get everything back.

• Meanwhile, in battle: the Philistines are closing in and, rather than die at the hands of “these pagan Philistines,” Saul falls on his own sword and dies.

• Psalm 34 is David’s song of deliverance, ending the week on a sweet note.

Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the week’s readings below and in the weekly chat!

For new subscribers — The Edit is a periodic newsletter covering my quick thoughts on topics related to both Capitalism & Glitter — everything from politics to conspiracy theories, to travel ideas, fashion trends, and home design projects.

This week we’re talking about Lindy West, polyamory, and what the Atlantic called the Death of Millennial Feminism — and giving you a sneak peek of our most recently completed home design project, the sunroom shelves!

Plus, my #1 favorite health hack.

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This Week

We are reading:

• Judges 13-21

• Ruth

• 1 Samuel 1-10

• Psalms 32, 35, 14, 15, 36, 86, 52

Summary

This week we continue reading Judges and learn the story of Samson.

A complicated figure, Samson is set apart at birth to ultimately deliver the Israelites from the Philistines. He is easily distracted, however — breaking his Nazarite vows by touching a dead body (the lion), possibly ingesting grapes or wine (partaking in feasts), and ultimately meeting his downfall when he tells Delilah his strength would be lost by cutting his hair.

Then we pivot into Ruth, one of the most beautiful stories in the Bible, before embarking upon the beginning of Israel’s kingship with Samuel.

The question that comes up over and over again this week is: are we following God, or are we all just doing what seems right in our own eyes?

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 117 — Monday, 4/27 — Judges 13-15, Psalm 32

• Day 118 — Tuesday, 4/28 — Judges 16-18, Psalm 35

• Day 119 — Wednesday, 4/29 — Judges 19-21, Psalm 14

• Day 120 — Thursday, 4/30 — Ruth 1-4, Psalm 15

• Day 121 — Friday, 5/1 — 1 Samuel 1-3, Psalm 36

• Day 122 — Saturday, 5/2 — 1 Samuel 4-7, Psalm 86

• Day 123 — Sunday, 5/3 — 1 Samuel 8-10, Psalm 52

Day 117 — Monday, 4/27 — Judges 13-15, Psalm 32

• An angel appears to a couple and tell them they are going to have a son who will be a Nazirite and deliver the Israelites from the Philistines. They name him Samson.

• Samson kills a lion and later eats honey from its carcass — breaking the Nazirite vow never to touch a dead body.

Day 118 — Tuesday, 4/28 — Judges 16-18, Psalm 35

• Samson becomes blinded with infatuation with Delilah, who keeps trying to figure out the source of his power to sell him out to the Philistines

• After three false starts, Samson finally tells Delilah the source of his power is in his hair — she proceeds to cut it all off and turn him over to the Philistines

• Samson gets the final word, as his hair begins to grow back and God blesses him with one last feat of strength that takes out the Philistine leaders

• Israel continues to slide further into idolatry and confusion

Day 119 — Wednesday, 4/29 — Judges 19-21, Psalm 14

• The Israelites have descended into utter depravity. The story of the Levite’s concubine is heartbreaking.

• These chapters are marked by violence, civil war, and moral collapse, illustrating just what happens as humanity intermingles with the demonic offspring and drifts away from God.

Day 120 — Thursday, 4/30 — Ruth 1-4, Psalm 15

• The story of Ruth’s faithfulness and loyalty to her mother-in-law — and her dedication to fulfilling her late husband’s family line — results in Ruth ending up in the lineage of King David (and eventually Jesus).

Day 121 — Friday, 5/1 — 1 Samuel 1-3, Psalm 36

• Hannah, unable to have children, prays earnestly at the tabernacle and promises to dedicate her son to God. God answers her prayer, and she gives birth to Samuel.

• She fulfills her vow by bringing him to serve under the priest Eli, whose sons are corrupt and abuse their priestly role.

• Samuel hears God calling him at night. With Eli’s guidance, he responds, and God reveals a shocking judgment against Eli’s household.

Day 122 — Saturday, 5/2 — 1 Samuel 4-7, Psalm 86

• The Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant and treat it like a lucky charm, which backfires on them — destroying their Dagon idol, killing their townfolk — so they return it.

• Eli’s sons die, and Eli himself dies upon hearing the news.

• Samuel calls Israel to repentance. The people turn back to God, and Israel defeats the Philistines. Samuel becomes a recognized leader and judge.

Day 123 — Sunday, 5/3 — 1 Samuel 8-10, Psalm 52

• As Samuel grows old, he appoints his sons as the judges of Israel, but they become corrupt.

• The elders of Israel demand a king “like other nations.” God tells Samuel to grant their request but warns that a king will take advantage of them (taxes, labor, control).

• Saul is identified by God as Israel’s first king

And next week we begin Israel’s transition into the Kingdom period — stay tuned!

Every single human being alive on Earth today can trace their maternal lineage through an unbroken chain of mothers back to one woman.

One.

Her mitochondrial DNA (the genetic material that lives outside the cell nucleus and passes only from mother to child) survived in an unbroken chain to you, to me, to all eight billion of us.

On the paternal side, the story mirrors itself.

One man is the common ancestor of every living man’s Y chromosome, passed down from father to son for millennia.

“Mitochondrial Eve” and “Y-chromosomal Adam”

The story according to mainstream science is that Mitochondrial Eve lived somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, roughly 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. She wasn’t the only woman alive. She wasn’t alone in a garden. They are very careful to say that. But she is the most recent common ancestor of every human maternal line, meaning every other woman’s matrilineal lineage eventually died out, and hers didn’t.

Y-chromosomal Adam is estimated to have lived somewhere between 200,000 and 340,000 years ago. Not at the same time as Mitochondrial Eve, but likely in the exact same region of Africa.

These dates are calculated using something called the molecular clock, which is an assumed mutation rate that tells researchers how far back a lineage branches. Under the standard model, these two figures represent not a literal Adam and Eve who existed as a couple and populated the world, but as the oldest known genetic roots of the entire human family tree.

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The Clock We Built Ourselves

But the molecular clock has a major problem. The dates given for Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam are not measured, they are calculated using an assumed mutation rate. Change the assumption, and the dates move. Dramatically, in some cases. But that’s not even the biggest issue.

There are two clocks, and they disagree by a degree of 2x.

The pedigree rate is the mutation rate actually observed in living parents and children across multiple generations. It runs roughly twice as fast as the phylogenetic rate which is used to calibrate deep-time dates. Scientists calibrate the slower phylogenetic clock against fossil dates. But fossil dates are themselves derived from radiometric methods with their own potentially faulty assumptions.

The entire system is self-reinforcing: fossils date the molecular clock; the molecular clock dates the fossils. A skeptic is entirely justified in asking whether this house of mirrors could be systematically off.

And if you plug the faster pedigree rate into the genetic models, Mitochondrial Eve’s date compresses dramatically, potentially to within the range of recorded human history. The genetic “Adam” and “Eve” could both fall within 5,000–15,000 years ago, not hundreds of thousands.

This aligns with the biblical timeline, and also puts both “Mitochondrial Eve” and “Y-chromosomal Adam” into the same general time frame — in the same general location.

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The Genetics of the Great Flood

Both “Mitochondrial Eve” and “Y-chromosomal Adam” each have 3 distinct subgroups. That means that genetically, everyone comes from 3 male lines, and 3 female lines, a split which appears a bit later on in the genetic lineage.

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