8 One day Elisha went to the town of Shunem. A wealthy woman lived there, and she urged him to come to her home for a meal. After that, whenever he passed that way, he would stop there for something to eat.
9 She said to her husband, “I am sure this man who stops in from time to time is a holy man of God. 10 Let’s build a small room for him on the roof and furnish it with a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp. Then he will have a place to stay whenever he comes by.”
11 One day Elisha returned to Shunem, and he went up to this upper room to rest. 12 He said to his servant Gehazi, “Tell the woman from Shunem I want to speak to her.” When she appeared, 13 Elisha said to Gehazi, “Tell her, ‘We appreciate the kind concern you have shown us. What can we do for you? Can we put in a good word for you to the king or to the commander of the army?’”
“No,” she replied, “my family takes good care of me.”
14 Later Elisha asked Gehazi, “What can we do for her?”
Gehazi replied, “She doesn’t have a son, and her husband is an old man.”
15 “Call her back again,” Elisha told him. When the woman returned, Elisha said to her as she stood in the doorway, 16 “Next year at this time you will be holding a son in your arms!”
“No, my lord!” she cried. “O man of God, don’t deceive me and get my hopes up like that.”
17 But sure enough, the woman soon became pregnant. And at that time the following year she had a son, just as Elisha had said.
18 One day when her child was older, he went out to help his father, who was working with the harvesters. 19 Suddenly he cried out, “My head hurts! My head hurts!”
His father said to one of the servants, “Carry him home to his mother.”
20 So the servant took him home, and his mother held him on her lap. But around noontime he died. 21 She carried him up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, then shut the door and left him there. 22 She sent a message to her husband: “Send one of the servants and a donkey so that I can hurry to the man of God and come right back.”
23 “Why go today?” he asked. “It is neither a new moon festival nor a Sabbath.”
But she said, “It will be all right.”
24 So she saddled the donkey and said to the servant, “Hurry! Don’t slow down unless I tell you to.”
25 As she approached the man of God at Mount Carmel, Elisha saw her in the distance. He said to Gehazi, “Look, the woman from Shunem is coming. 26 Run out to meet her and ask her, ‘Is everything all right with you, your husband, and your child?’”
“Yes,” the woman told Gehazi, “everything is fine.”
27 But when she came to the man of God at the mountain, she fell to the ground before him and caught hold of his feet. Gehazi began to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone. She is deeply troubled, but the Lord has not told me what it is.”
28 Then she said, “Did I ask you for a son, my lord? And didn’t I say, ‘Don’t deceive me and get my hopes up’?”
29 Then Elisha said to Gehazi, “Get ready to travel; take my staff and go! Don’t talk to anyone along the way. Go quickly and lay the staff on the child’s face.”
30 But the boy’s mother said, “As surely as the Lord lives and you yourself live, I won’t go home unless you go with me.” So Elisha returned with her.
31 Gehazi hurried on ahead and laid the staff on the child’s face, but nothing happened. There was no sign of life. He returned to meet Elisha and told him, “The child is still dead.”
32 When Elisha arrived, the child was indeed dead, lying there on the prophet’s bed. 33 He went in alone and shut the door behind him and prayed to the Lord. 34 Then he lay down on the child’s body, placing his mouth on the child’s mouth, his eyes on the child’s eyes, and his hands on the child’s hands. And as he stretched out on him, the child’s body began to grow warm again! 35 Elisha got up, walked back and forth across the room once, and then stretched himself out again on the child. This time the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes!
36 Then Elisha summoned Gehazi. “Call the child’s mother!” he said. And when she came in, Elisha said, “Here, take your son!” 37 She fell at his feet and bowed before him, overwhelmed with gratitude. Then she took her son in her arms and carried him downstairs.
2 Kings 4:8-37
Dear God, my wife brought this story up to me yesterday, and it’s such a good one. It describes women so well. How much they love their children. What they are willing to do for their children. My wife pointed out to me how willing this woman–albeit a wealthy woman who might have had more courage than a peasant–was to stand up to Elisha and confront him when necessary.
First, she was extremely hospitable to him. She could sense that he was really of you and so she got her husband to build Elisha a special room. I know some women of means, and I can picture them being this compassionate. I can picture them approaching their husbands and saying, “Hey, we need to do this,” and their husbands agreeing.
But then this thing takes on a whole new dimension. The woman carries a great pain and she has it tucked away. There were months and years in her past where she had her hopes up that she would get pregnant, only to be disappointed. It’s a wound she rather keep covered than open and relive. She finally killed her hopes and buried them. She had given up hope. And sometimes that’s the right thing to do. Sometimes the hope is gone, and dealing with that disappointment is difficult. In this case, however, Elisha brought it all up again and she told him flat out that she doesn’t want to be disappointed again.
But she wasn’t disappointed. She had the baby, and he grew enough to be with his father out in the field. We don’t know how many years passed, but she at least had him for a few. And then he had some sort of brain aneurism or something and died. It’s her response to this death that really shows what mothers feel for their children and how nearly all of them will give their last breath for their child.
- It’s not clear she tells her husband the boy died. It looks like she just tells him she needs to go see Elisha.
- She heads out and when she gets to him she confronts Elisha with her pain: “Did I ask you for a son, my lord? And didn’t I say, ‘Don’t deceive me and get my hopes up’?”
- She won’t take anything less from Elisha than what she wants. She could have accepted Gehazi going back with her with Elisha’s staff, but she would accept nothing less than Elisha himself. If her son was dead, she wanted 1.) all of Elisha’s power and connection with you and 2.) if it didn’t work, she wanted him to feel all of her pain along with her.
It wasn’t nearly as critical as this, but our daughter wasn’t speaking at the age of 3. It really concerned us. Our doctor couldn’t see anything wrong and kept explaining it away: “Well, her older brother talks for her.” Stuff like that. But my wife would not accept that answer. She badgered the doctor until he finally referred us to a pediatric ENT who discovered she needed tubes in her ears. As soon as we got that done, she began speaking almost immediately. But who knows how her language would have developed had my wife not been so persistent?
Father, I have pain in my life that I talk about with you often. And I’ve gotten to a point where I have pretty much accepted it. In fact, it’s hard to imagine my life without that pain. But one thing you’ve done for me in this pain is you’ve taught me to think about my personal pain less and less and care for the one who is causing me pain more and more. I heard someone refer to the healing of Bartimaeus recently and how Jesus asked him, “What would you have me do for you?” The person said, “What would you have Jesus do for you?” My answer wasn’t about me. It was for the healing for the ones I love who are in such pain and have been so deeply wounded. So I come to you this morning as the mother went to Elisha and ask that you heal their pain. Heal their wounds. Heal their souls, hearts, minds, and bodies. Raise up people in their lives who can be your voice as you offer them healing. And I have a friend who is really afraid for her son this morning. Answer her prayers, Father. Even in ways she is not expecting. Please, answer her prayers.
I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,
Amen
P.S. I wonder what Elisha’s prayers to you were like while he traveled back to her home. Was he regretting having offered her the child. Did he hear from you in the first place when he offered it, or was all of this out of his own head and Gehazi’s suggestion? Was he repenting to you? And when Gehazi returned and said the staff didn’t work, did Elisha start to empathize with the woman’s pain in a new way? I could probably spend a lot of time thinking through how this experience impacted Elisha as well.
Emails to God 