Morning, June 24, adapted from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

“While Jesus was saying these things, one of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breasts at which You nursed.’ ²⁸ But He said, ‘On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.’”   Luke 11:27-28

Some have — with much affection — imagined that it must have involved very special privileges to have been the mother of our Lord, because they supposed that she had the benefit of looking into his heart in a way in which we cannot hope to do. There may be an appearance of plausibility in the idea, but not much. We do not know that Mary knew more than others; what she did know she did well to treasure in her heart; but she does not appear from anything we read in the Gospels to have been a better-instructed believer than any other of Christ’s disciples. All that she knew we also may discover. Do you wonder that we should say so? Here is a text to prove it: “The LORD confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them.” Remember the Master’s words–“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” So graciously does this Divine Revealer of secrets tell us his heart, that he keeps nothing back which is profitable to us; his own assurance is, “If it were not so, I would have told you.” Doesn’t he today reveal himself to us as he but not to the world? Indeed; and therefore we will not ignorantly cry out, “Blessed is the womb that bare you,” but we will intelligently bless God that, having heard the Word and kept it, we have first of all as true a communion with the Saviour as Mary his mother had, and in the second place as true a familiarity with the secrets of his heart as she can be supposed to have obtained. Happy are we to be so privileged!