{"id":4820,"date":"2013-02-25T08:07:50","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T14:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wnac.org\/twg\/?p=4820"},"modified":"2013-02-25T08:07:50","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T14:07:50","slug":"a-crippled-orphan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wnac.org\/twg\/?p=4820","title":{"rendered":"A Crippled Orphan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnd the king said, Is there not yet any of the house of Saul,, that I may show the kindness of God unto him?\u00a0 And Ziba said unto the king, Jonathan hath yet a son, which is lame on his feet.\u00a0 Where is he?\u00a0 And Ziba said unto the king, behold he is in the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, in Lodebar. Then King David sent, and fetched him out of the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, from Lodebar\u201d (2 Samuel 9:3-5).<\/em><\/p>\n

The last week of our study is entitled, \u201cGod Restores the Palace.\u201d I found an interesting article on the link www.enduringword.com<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 helpful in writing this week\u2019s devotionals.<\/p>\n

King David is speaking with a servant of the former King Saul.\u00a0 He asks him a question that we might think puzzling unless we understand the culture of that day. \u201cIt was customary in those days for the king of a new dynasty to completely massacre anyone connected with the prior dynasty. David goes against the principle of revenge and against the principle of self-preservation and asks what he can do for the family of his enemy.\u201d His mortal enemy Saul and his son Jonathan, David\u2019s best friend, had been killed in battle. As far as David knew, probably any other members of Saul\u2019s family had died.\u00a0 However, there was at least one member not accounted for and Ziba, a former servant of Saul knew him.\u00a0 He was an orphan named Mephibosheth.\u00a0 He was Jonathan\u2019s son who was about five years old when his father and grandfather were killed. It was believed he became lame in his feet when he heard of their death.\u00a0 Out of fear, his nurse fled with him to protect him from what she thought would be certain death.<\/p>\n

Mephibosheth lived a lowly life in the house of Machir, a man who was possibly part of Mephibosheth’s mother\u2019s family. David sent messengers to bring Mephibosheth to him. David wanted to show him kindness for his friend Jonathan\u2019s sake.\u00a0 More importantly he wanted to show the kindness of God. This story reveals God\u2019s restorative care upon a crippled orphan.\u00a0 He was going to be taken from a life of obscurity and poverty to one of prominence and wealth. Tomorrow we will share more of the crippled orphan\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

Sue Winchester
\nMissouri<\/p>\n

PRAY TOGETHER: <\/strong>Pray for workers Mick and Rachel, leaving for a short term assignment this week. Pray also that they would soon receive visas enabling them to begin a long-term assignment in a European country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnd the king said, Is there not yet any of the house of Saul,, that I may show the kindness of God unto him?\u00a0 And Ziba said unto the king, Jonathan hath yet a son, which is lame on his … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-devotional"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wnac.org\/twg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wnac.org\/twg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wnac.org\/twg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wnac.org\/twg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wnac.org\/twg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4820"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wnac.org\/twg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4822,"href":"https:\/\/wnac.org\/twg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4820\/revisions\/4822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wnac.org\/twg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wnac.org\/twg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wnac.org\/twg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}