Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Jeff Parrott.

The fabric of every good story is held together by a common thread,

a repeated problem that needs to be solved, a recurring desire that needs

to be fulfilled. We know this as a motif, a unifying theme that carries the narrative onward.

That word motif has roots in medieval Latin, and it conveys a sense of movement. The motif of a story is the pattern

that prods it along and keeps us engaged as it progresses. One of the key motifs of the

biblical storyline is the constant struggle with a reality that's felt deeply inside the human experience,

yet left completely outside of human control. And that is the motif of death,

the loss of life. It's the most vivid and tragic exhibit of how things are not the way they're supposed to be.

Since the first rebellion in the Garden of Eden, death has been a constant presence,

a ceaseless enemy, not just in the biblical story, but in our personal stories.

It's the unwanted motif that unravels everything. And of course, this includes

physical, literal death, the death of a loved one that's unbearable, even if you see it coming.

It's felt in the awful loss of life when we never get to say goodbye, or the sharp pain of losing a young

life where we never even got to say hello. The pattern of death pierces every human heart.

Then there are the metaphorical, yet no less real ways that we undergo the loss of life, the death of a

marriage, the death of a job, the death of a dream. Each loss pierces our hearts in its own way,

and even when we aren't facing death head on, we live with the haunting fear of it. Death is a shadow. We can't

escape on our own. This is the mortim motif, the pattern, the struggle that lingers in the story

of the Bible and in every person's story as well. Our passage today covers only two verses in 2nd Kings

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