This week I retell the story of the prophet Elisha and the Shunammite woman from 2 Kings 4:8-37.
“Don’t go there,” she warned me, when I prophesied that I would find her nursing her son when I returned next year, but it was true. God saw fit to answer her deepest longing out of regard for her goodness to me.
They called the boy Nathaniel since he was indeed God’s gift. Their household had always been a happy place. Miriam and Joshua made a good match, despite the difference in their years. Though Joshua stood out as a leader in Shunem, I always appreciated that it was Miriam who saw God in me and offered their home’s warmest hospitality whenever I passed their way.
But once Nathaniel arrived, his precious little life lit up their world as nothing else could. As much as I relished getting to see his first steps and then hear his first words, the changes in Nathaniel’s parents were what warmed my heart the most. From the little room they prepared for me I could wake to Miriam’s joyful laughter while she fed Nathaniel breakfast. Years dropped from Joshua’s face and shoulders as he taught his young son his letters, or showed him how to repair some farming device.
It had been only a few weeks since my last visit when, from a long way off, I spotted Miriam making her way to my Mount Carmel dwelling. I knew instantly something was wrong, so I hastened Gehazi to run to meet her and find out. But even out of earshot I could see that she would reveal nothing to my servant. Instead she quickened her dogged pace and threw herself down before me, clinging to my ankles.
She pitched her desperation to me with rebuke, “Did I ask for a son, master? Didn’t I tell you, ‘Don’t tease me with false hopes’?” And I knew that somehow I had to save her son.
I sent Gehazi running ahead so that he could lay my staff across Nathaniel’s face, but Miriam made sure that she and I were not far behind him. I thought God would work healing through my staff, but as I entered their house on Gehazi’s heels his drawn face told me I had been wrong to presume.
But I knew the child must not stay dead! Everything Miriam believed about God’s love hung on this extraordinary gift of a child she had given up hoping for.
So I prayed: “Holy One, show me how to revive this child. I know You can make it happen and Miriam knows you can make it happen. Put your glory on display for us today.”
Next I got up on the bed and covered Nathaniel’s body with my own. I felt the chill of death leave his small frame. I got up then, not wanting to crush him with my weight and continued to pray as I paced around the room. “Lord, have mercy!”
Then the Holy One told me to stretch my body again over the boy. “Wait, Elisha, wait until you know he has returned fully.” I continued praying hard as I huddled Nathaniel’s body beneath my own.
“A-choo!” He sneezed! In fact he sneezed seven times! Springing up from the bed, I found myself laughing and crying at once. But the Lord urged me, “Get Miriam in here. The child needs his mother.”
As Miriam embraced her Nathaniel, I continued to pray. “Thank you, Lord, for calling me to witness this miracle. Thank you for Miriam’s faith that You are not a God who could have given her a son only to break her heart by taking him away again.”
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