In this follow-up to yesterday's reading, God sent Elijah to Ahab to tell him the punishment he would suffer because of his sins. When Ahab heard this, he "humbled" himself before God and God took back his punishment. It's not clear in the readings if Ahab was aware of Jezebel's maneuvering to kill Naboth, but he was guilty of all of the other sins of disobedience and rejection of the Law. There are a few lessons here for us. The first is that God knows when we sin. There is nowhere we can go, and no place where we can hide from God. He knows when we sin and he knows when we do the right thing. The second is sins are punished. Usually the sin carries its own punishment. The liar and the thief cannot be trusted! Violence brings on violence, and it usually escalates. The third thing we see, is that God respects the one who confesses his sin, repents and does penance. We can't be sure if Ahab repented and did penance because he was actually sorry or if he was afraid of the punishment God proclaimed. The same can be true of us. Do we repent because we fear the punishment we deserve, or because we are truly sorry for our actions? It is our responsibility to examine our hearts when answering this question. Children, we know, don't like to get caught because they don't want to be punished, but as we age, we should avoid sins because it's the right thing to do and not because we might suffer for them. We can be like Ahab, or we can follow the commandments and not put ourselves in Ahab's position.