Wednesday, September 10, 2025
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
The sons of the prophets have outgrown their quarters, so they go down to the Jordan to build a new place to live. As one man fells a beam, the borrowed iron axe head slips into the water, and he cries out in distress because it was not his. Elisha does not scold him; he asks where it fell, cuts a stick, casts it in, and the iron swims. The same prophet who makes iron float then stands on the mountain at Dothan, where his frightened servant sees only Syrian horses and chariots surrounding the city. Elisha prays, the young man’s eyes are opened, and he sees the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire. Later, the Syrian army is struck blind, led into Samaria, fed, and sent home in peace. Yet the siege returns, famine grows so severe that an ass’s head sells for eighty pieces of silver, and a woman cries to the king that she and another have boiled her son. The king tears his clothes and sends to take Elisha’s head, but God has already promised that by tomorrow a measure of fine flour will sell for a shekel. Four leprous men at the gate, reasoning that they will die anyway, stumble into an empty Syrian camp, for the Lord made the host hear the noise of chariots and flee. They eat, hide silver and gold, then say to one another, “We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace.” They tell the king’s household, the people spoil the tents, and the skeptical lord who mocked the promise sees the plenty but is trodden down in the gate and dies.
As September settles over us and the days shorten, this passage reminds us that God’s care reaches into both the small and the staggering. A borrowed axe head matters to Him; so does a besieged city. Elisha’s God is not distant from lost tools or starving mothers. The servant at Dothan needed his eyes opened, not his circumstances changed—the chariots of fire were already there. We often see only the host arrayed against us: the unpaid bill, the diagnosis, the fractured relationship, the news that will not relent. Yet the mountain is fuller than we know. And when abundance finally comes, as it came to Samaria, we are not to hoard it in tents. The lepers’ confession is our own: this is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace. Whether the good news is a floating axe head or a city delivered, it is meant to be carried back to those still sitting at the gate.
Reflection
- Where in your life are you staring only at the horses and chariots surrounding you, and what would change if you asked God to open your eyes to what He has already placed on the mountain?
- The lepers nearly kept the good news to themselves until they remembered those starving inside the city—who in your circle needs to hear the tidings you have been hiding?
Prayer
Lord, open our eyes as You opened the eyes of Elisha’s servant, that we may see Your chariots of fire round about us even when the enemy seems to compass us on every side. You are the God who makes iron swim and famines end; nothing is too small for Your care or too great for Your power. Forgive us for hoarding the good tidings of Your salvation when others sit starving at the gate. Give us the courage of those four lepers to rise and tell what we have found. Keep us from the unbelief of the mocking lord, and let us taste and see that You are good, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.