Gold Nugget 200 - A Mere Boy
Mephibosheth … A mere boy, lamed by a careless nurse, a son of one who had renounced all claim to the throne! His name and misfortune are mentioned, and the tide of events moves on.
Now and then we meet with such incidental references in the Bible history. They are but specimens of multitudes equally insignificant who played a small part in the affairs of the world, and are unknown for ever. Their selection for brief allusion is doubtless part of a vast providential method by which the historians were unconsciously guided to refer to whatever might illustrate the process of elimination by which God at last accomplished his purpose in first raising up David to supreme dominion of his people, and afterwards the true David of the present dispensation. The poor lad little knew that he was an element in the working out of a great purpose, and that, small as was his figure in life, it served as a foil to God’s greater characters.
Modern science teaches us that nothing is really lost, that all small items are used up in the great development of things towards a future higher condition. So the humbler forms of human life are not all lost. They play their part, and to some extent modify all that comes after them.
In the Church of Christ, the little ones, feeble and uninfluential in a worldly sense, have some part to perform in the great spiritual development which God is working out. Our Mephibosheths are not lost to mankind. The smaller figures of life render the totality of live more varied, and develop qualities which uniform greatness could never originate.
The Pulpit Commentary, II Samuel p. 103, II Samuel 4:1-12 (C. Chapman)
See also: Matthew 18:6, 18:10-14, Philippians 4:11
Gold Nugget 200
A Mere Boy
