A Daily Dose of Good News
Tuesday, February 9, 2021
After 10:30am today, this devotional will be offered online at https://youtu.be/BhSZ3stK2j4
A printer-friendly version of today’s devotion is available at DDGN 20210209
Additionally, if you’d like to talk about this Daily Dose of Good News further, or previous ones, have questions, or additional thoughts, please feel free to email me at sara.wunsch@engagedbygrace.org. I’d love to interactively engage with you about them.
Good morning! It’s February 9 and it’s time for our Daily Dose of Good News! It is a short passage from 2 Kings 8:1-6. For those of you who joined me in a Daily Dose yesterday, that was a long passage. You can consider this sort of a P.S., because it references that text, and the characters in that text.
Now Elisha had said to the woman whose son he had restored to life, “Get up and go with your household, and settle wherever you can; for the Lord has called for a famine, and it will come on the land for seven years.” So the woman got up and did according to the word of the man of God; she went with her household and settled in the land of the Philistines seven years. At the end of the seven years, when the woman returned from the land of the Philistines, she set out to appeal to the king for her house and her land. Now the king was talking with Gehazi the servant of the man of God, saying, “Tell me all the great things that Elisha has done.” While he was telling the king how Elisha had restored a dead person to life, the woman whose son he had restored to life appealed to the king for her house and her land. Gehazi said, “My lord king, here is the woman, and here is her son whom Elisha restored to life.” When the king questioned the woman, she told him. So the king appointed an official for her, saying, “Restore all that was hers, together with all the revenue of the fields from the day that she left the land until now.”
Here ends the reading.
This passage is neatly wrapped with trust at the beginning, trust at the end, and God’s perfect timing in the middle.
At the beginning of this text, Elisha tells this woman to leave, because of a famine. She immediately goes, without hesitation- leaves her land, leaves her house- immediately, it sounds like. She trusts this Man of God, she trusts this God- to care for her wellbeing- whether she understands the route or not, she trusts this God.
At the end of this passage, as Elisha’s servant is talking to the king and explaining to him what happened- as Gehazi is explaining it, the woman shows up. Because she shows up, the king then begins to trust this Man of God, and to trust God- in this. So, I think it’s interesting that one person’s trust causes another person’s trust.
In the midst of that, is this perfect timing component- the woman shows up, right when Gehazi is in the middle of the story. I think it can be easy sometimes for us to forget God’s perfect timing. But God is in charge of the universe, and God is in charge of our lives, and while there may be things in the past that have caused us to trust, and there may be things that our lives represent to other people which help them to trust in God, I think a really big message of this passage is about how God restores. God not only restored the land that she immediately left when told to do so, but she got all the financials, even from the time she wasn’t there, she reaped whatever her field made.
So, as we are in this time, we haven’t been away for seven years, she was gone from her real life for seven years. We’re not quite at one year of this pandemic, but it might feel like seven. So, in the midst of that, in the midst of what feels like real famine to us, in terms of being starved for camaraderie, physical affection, embracing each other, community, eating together and all of the things that we grieve in our current famine, which we experience through this pandemic… remember to trust in our God who has been with us before. And how this God, in God’s perfect timing, will also bring us out of this famine. There will be at some point, an end to the pandemic. While things may not return back to the way they were before- they don’t return back to the way they were before for the woman- she gets her house back, she gets her land back, but there’s been an increase. So, let’s look for the increase that God has in store for us in our lives. The wealth that God has in front of us in new realizations, new relationships, new importance in values that God wants us to hold dear… But trust God’s perfect timing, as God will restore us as well. God will be with us in that, and we ask for God’s help to trust in that. But that promise of restoration is a great one to hold on to today. Have a wonderful day everybody! Bye-bye.
