Reflection: Now’s Your Chance
If you haven’t perceived before how the Bible is laced with gold threads—people, promises, places and incidents sutured together with a glimmer, today might be a good time to start stitching in the sovereign story. A New Kingdom is coming.
Today’s passage is set in 840BC and again, babies are being butchered. This time it’s a queen who’s power hungry enough to order the dastardly deed. She’s intent on not just power, but safe to say, she’s intent on snuffing out the royal line of promise. All hell is bent on giving that gold-stitched story—God’s promise of a new kingdom—the chop.
In steps Jehosheba. In the hands of the sovereign Lord, she’s intent on preserving the royal line.
Yes, it’s a royal story. But it’s not really about palace courts and powerful edicts. Sure, Jehosheba is a king’s daughter, king’s sister, and even a priest’s wife. But she’s travelling under the royal radar. Shifting around in the shadows, she snatches a baby, her blue-blooded nephew Joash, and hides him from the nasty queen. But here’s the real regal twist: Deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill,
[God] treasures up His bright designs,
and works His sovereign will. *
While chaos reigns in places of ‘power’ Jehosheba sequesters a little would-be king and his nurse in the temple. And, sure enough, in God’s perfect timing, at the age of seven (there’s something special about seven’s), Joash comes out of hiding to be king. And a good king he was.
Jehosheba gets a mention, once. Maybe you get a mention…once in a while. Or not?
Prayer:
Unfathomable God, work your sovereign will through me and other willing Christ-followers as we attend to your world and look forward to your renewed Kingdom.
*from “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” a poem by William Cowper