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Share the good news with both high and low

Title page of Havergal’s My King

Today's Devotional

Then they said to one another, “We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news. If we are silent and wait until the morning light, punishment will overtake us. Now therefore come; let us go and tell the king’s household.” — 2 Kings 7:9 (ESV).

Just the last persons who would seem to need good tidings, (2 Kings 7:3) and the last, too, who would seem likely to have them to convey! But oh, how true the figure is! how many among the King’s own household need the good tidings which these lepers brought! For they are starving so near to plenty, (Psalm 81:10-16) and poor within reach of treasure, (1 Corinthians 3:21,22) and thinking themselves besieged when the Lord has dispersed the foe for them. Is it not often the spiritual leper, the conscious outcast, the famine-stricken, possession-less soul, who takes the boldest step into the fullest salvation, and finds deliverance and abundance and riches beyond what the more favored and older inmate of the King’s household knows anything about?

It may be one of the enemy’s devices (2 Corinthians 2:11) that we sometimes hold back good tidings, just because we shrink from telling them to the king’s household. How many who do not hesitate to speak of Jesus to little children or poor people, or even to persons who openly say, “We will not have this man to reign over us,” never say one word to their fellow-subjects about the blessed discoveries that the Holy Spirit has made to them of the fulness of his salvation (John 16:14-15) and the reality of his power, and the treasures of his word, and the satisfaction of his love, and the far-reaching fulfilments of his promises, and the real, actual deliverance, and freedom, and victory, which he gives, (Romans 8:37) and the strength and the healing that flow through faith in his name! (Acts 3:16)….

It does not in the least follow that members of Christian families need no such “good tidings” because of their favored position. They may need it all the more, because no one thinks it necessary to try and help them. “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, specially unto them who are of the household of faith.” (Galatians 6:10).

And when? The constantly recurring word meets us here again, “Now!”

About the author and the source

Frances Havergal (1836–1879), the author of such well-known hymns as “Take My Life and Let it Be” and “I Gave My Life for Thee,” also wrote several devotional books, each having a month’s worth of thoughts. It is from one of these that we have taken today’s meditation.

Frances Ridley Havergal. My King, or Daily Thoughts for the King’s Children. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1867.

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