Thursday, September 10, 2026
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: 2 Kings 6-10
Key Verse
2 Kings 8:25 — “In the twelfth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel did Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah begin to reign.”
Devotional Thought
What do you do when the axe head is at the bottom of the river? That is where 2 Kings 6 opens, and it is where most of us live more often than we would like to admit. A borrowed tool, a young prophet, a careless swing—and suddenly an ordinary day becomes a crisis. The man cries out, “Alas, master! for it was borrowed,” and Elisha does not scold him or send him away. He asks a simple question: “Where fell it?” Then he cuts a stick, casts it into the water, and the iron swims. God cares about the small, embarrassing losses of His people. He is not too busy with the armies of Syria to notice a borrowed axe head in the Jordan. As September settles in and the routines of autumn begin again—school, work, the ordinary demands of another season—remember that the God of Elisha is still attentive to the details that feel too small to pray about.
But the same chapter lifts our eyes to something far larger. When the Syrian host surrounds Dothan and Elisha’s servant panics, the prophet prays, “LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see.” And the young man beholds the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. “They that be with us are more than they that be with them.” Fear is often a failure of vision, not a failure of faith. We see the siege; we do not see the angels. We count the enemy’s chariots; we forget the Lord’s. Later, the same Elisha who asked for opened eyes asks for blindness to fall on the Syrian army, and then—remarkably—he leads them to Samaria and tells the king to feed them. The man who could have destroyed them set bread and water before them instead.
Yet the narrative does not end in triumph. Samaria is besieged again, famine grows so severe that a woman cries out about boiling her own son, and the king of Israel tears his clothes and swears to take Elisha’s head. Even the king’s officer mocks the promise of flour and barley: “If the LORD would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?” And Elisha tells him plainly: thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof. The four leprous men at the gate, rejected and dying, stumble into the abandoned Syrian camp and find it empty because God had made the enemy hear the noise of a great host. They eat, they hide silver and gold, and then conviction seizes them: “We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace.” The promise comes true the next day. Flour sells for a shekel. And the mocking officer dies in the gate, trampled by the very crowd he doubted.
This is a hard, hopeful passage. It shows us a God who rescues axe heads and armies, who opens eyes and closes them, who feeds enemies and fulfills His word to the letter. It also shows us people who hoard good news until their conscience will not let them rest, and a king who blames the prophet for a famine his own sin produced. The lepers’ words should echo in our own hearts this week. We have found a camp full of bread we did not earn. We hold the best news in the world. It is a day of good tidings—do not hold your peace.
Reflection
- Where in your life are you staring at the siege and forgetting the chariots of fire—and what would it look like this week to ask God to open your eyes rather than to change your circumstances?
- The lepers nearly kept the good news to themselves out of fear and comfort. Who in your circle needs to hear what God has done for you, and what is holding you back from telling them?
Prayer
Lord, open our eyes that we may see. We confess how often we count the enemy’s horses and forget the mountain full of fire that surrounds Your servants. You are the God who makes iron swim, who feeds the hungry and humbles the proud. Thank You for the bread we did not earn and the deliverance we did not deserve. Give us the courage of those leprous men, that we would not hold our peace on a day of good tidings. Make us faithful in the small losses and the great fears alike, trusting that they who are with us are more than they who are against us. In the name of Jesus, Amen.