Harry Foster
"And she answered, It is well." 2 Kings 4:26
IT has been my experience that some practical acquaintance with resurrection forms an abiding principle in our life and work for God. What has been given by Him so often has to go down into death and be raised up by a further divine miracle if it is to function fully for Him.
The Bible is full of this principle and from the many examples I have chosen the experience of this unnamed woman of Shunem whose simple faith made possible the greatest of Elisha's many miracles. As to her faith, what can be nobler and more inspiring than her reply to the question about her family circumstances that all was well. This is surely one of the most eloquent uses of the great Bible word Shalom -- peace. Our versions translate it by the words, 'It is well', but the N.I.V. makes it even more vivid and emphatic by its rendering, "Everything is all right!" Her story will repay closer examination.
Her name is not given, but she is described as a great woman. It could have been her size, though that is doubtful. It could have referred to her possessions and is sometimes rendered "wealthy", but there is little in the story to support that idea. It could even be a reference to her status, though even that seems unlikely for she was, after all, a farmer's wife. One thing we do know, however, and that is that when the crucial test was applied to her, she proved to be a woman great in faith. She was like another nameless woman of the New Testament who was commended by the Lord Jesus in the words, "O woman, great is thy faith" (Matthew 15:28). This is surely the most desirable greatness, and both cases encourage us, men as well as women, to know that it is something which can be true of anyone of us.
There are many stories related about Elisha's demonstrations of the Spirit's power and, as with the Gospel miracles, the chief value for us is the spiritual lessons which we can learn from them. This story of resurrection is not meant to suggest that our beloved dead can be brought back to life again (though it does remind us of the infinite capacity of our God to do this), but rather to illustrate for us a basic principle of our life and ministry, namely, that "we should not trust in ourselves but in God which raiseth the dead" (2 Corinthians 1:9). What are we to do in those situations when God-given responsibilities die on our hands? How shall we react when that which was truly brought into being by the power of God seems threatened by complete failure? Perhaps the great woman of Shunem can show us.
The story opens with an explanation of how she met God. Elisha, the man of the double portion of the Spirit, dropped in to have a meal at her home and was clearly invited to come again, and did so. He was a man of miraculous spiritual gifts but, so far as we know, she had not been informed of this and did not witness any of his wonders. Though called a prophet, he seems to have been a man of few words and we are not told that he gave any special spiritual instruction during those recurring meal times, yet, to use her own words, she came to "perceive" that this occasional visitor was "a holy man of God".
She had made a discovery. What did it mean? I suggest that it implies that on meeting Elisha, she found that she was meeting God. This is not fanciful. There are times when one goes into an assembly of God's people and experiences there a direct encounter with the Lord. Paul suggests [114/115] that this is how a church gathering should affect people (1 Corinthians 14:25). Moreover there are homes into which one goes and somehow, in the simplicity of that home life, the presence of God becomes much more real. I have heard this repeatedly stated concerning a certain home. 'It is different,' people have said, 'You sense the Lord's presence in the very atmosphere.' And sometimes -- though not often -- one encounters individuals who carry around with them something of the fragrance of God's holiness, not by any effort of theirs but simply by a spontaneous ministration of the divine presence. Such an awareness may bring comfort or it may bring a guilty unease, but there is no hiding the fact that the woman or man concerned has a habit of dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. Elisha was such a man. What was registered by his presence in the home at Shunem was not through any conscious effort on his part but because he gave an Old Testament foretaste of what Paul calls, "a sweet savour of Christ" (2 Corinthians 2:15).
Having been struck by this fact, the Shunammite woman consulted her husband as to how they could make provision for a more constant divine visitation in their home: "Let us make, I pray thee, a small roof chamber with walls; and let us set for him there a bed ...; and it shall be, when he cometh to us, that he shall turn in hither". The spiritual emphasis seems obvious, that is, that we should be careful to enjoy as much of the Lord's presence as possible, and make every effort to welcome Him into our homes and into our hearts. This simple couple did just that.
May I suggest that although no doubt every bit of furniture in that simple room was important, it was the bed which proved to be of special significance in the story. Can this be because in some way it became a symbol of the rest of faith? "Is it well with the child?" the anguished mother was asked and, because the dead body of her son now lay on Elisha's bed, she was able to reply, "It is well. Everything is all right."
From that same bed, the prophet gave the woman promise of a miraculous gift from God. Like many of us, she felt that though she had everything else needed for a full life, there was one great lack which she could never hope to have remedied. When the man of God gave her the promise that God would give her this most desired experience, she was so incredulous that she rebuked him for trying to raise her hopes to the impossible. She rebuked him for attempting to mislead her. This could never be! It was an impossibility! But our God is the God of the impossible and, so great was Elisha's confidence in that fact, he did not need to strive in prayer or go through any kind of religious performance, but could lie back on his bed and quietly tell the woman standing in his doorway that when the time came round, it would happen. And "at that season, when the time came round, as Elisha had said to her", the son was born.
Came the happy years of fulfilment, which we can all appreciate when they come to us, and then came the day of seeming calamity, which bewilders us when it happens in our case. Through the morning hours of that day she held in her arms the dying child whom God had given to her and who was her heart's delight. It must have seemed like the end of the world. Many of us in our own ministry have endured the same agony. Spiritual hopes and expectations which once seemed so high, have gone down into apparent death. We have felt overwhelmed by the tragedy of it all. The work which God Himself had given us and for which we felt He had added such help and encouragement looked as if it were crumbling to ruin before our very eyes. It was as though, instead of enjoying the living evidence of God at work, we were now embracing a corpse. In the case of the Shunammite, it went on all the morning. Those hours must have seemed like an eternity. She clasped him; she willed him to live; but at noon he died.
Her next action is of great significance. There were three beds on which she might have laid that precious little body. She could have put him on his own bed -- a death-bed -- and resigned herself to despair. Most of us are vulnerable to the suggestions that what had been happening was too good to be true, too good to last, and that after all we might have known that the promise of God was a deceit. If she had laid the precious burden on his own bed, she would have succumbed to that temptation. But she did not do so. Nor did she lay him upon her own bed. Had she acted in this way, seeking to grapple with the problem in her own energy, she would hardly have sent back the message of peace to her puzzled husband. No, she would have said that things were bad but that she was going to plead with Elisha and do her utmost to get his help in this intolerable burden which lay on her bed. [115/116]
Often we have done just that. We have wrestled with the matter, imagining perhaps that we needed to wrestle with God as Jacob thought he had to do. We have sent out the frantic message to others that we were determined yet to try to salvage something from the threatening disaster and often tried to implicate them in our struggle for survival. We could no longer carry the matter on our lap but we have retained it on our bed as we went hither and thither in our vain attempts to recover the situation for God.
She avoided this mistake also. In one symbolic act of faith's committal, she went up to that prophet's chamber, laid the child on the bed of the man of God and shut the door (v.21). This was not despair or resignation: it was active faith. She proved this by requesting an animal on which she could "run to the man of God, and come again".
The whole thing was a mystery. Even the discerning Elisha, who had a divine gift for seeing through any situation as he showed on other occasions, had to confess that this time it was something that the Lord had hid from him and not told him (v.27). If he could not understand it, the Shunammite certainly was unable to do so. Her mind was uninformed and her inner soul was bitterly distressed. And yet -- and this to me is the crux of everything -- she still insisted that everything was all right. She had no peace in her emotions; she had no peace in her mind; but she had peace in her spirit, for she had placed her charge on the bed of the man of God, and it was now up to Him, so her answer to the enquiry not only about herself and her husband, but also about the child was "Shalom" -- "Everything is all right".
This is the moment for faith to triumph, the moment when the mind is perplexed and the heart deeply troubled. We are not 'know-alls' -- far from it. "Did I not say, Do not deceive me?" she asked the man of God. "It seemed a good dream then and it seems a very bad dream now. My mind is in a turmoil. I cannot understand God's ways." How true to life this is! How strange and inexplicable are God's ways with those whom He loves and who love Him! We who have opened ourselves to Him in glad devotion and done our best to carry the responsibilities committed to us, find ourselves completely baffled when things go wrong.
We are not 'know-alls', nor are we made of steel, or professionals, glad to succeed if that can be, but philosophical if we have to face defeat. No, the responsibilities which God has given to us become our very hearts. This woman was deeply distressed, broken-hearted we would say, as she lay clutching at the prophet's feet in her anguish. Yet this was the same woman who had just given the answer of "Peace". She had no peace in her mind, no comfort in her emotions, but she was resting all on God.
In Jesus' presence naught but calm is found.
Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown?
Jesus we know, and He is on the throne.
THERE is, of course, much more to be said. How the woman would not accompany Gehazi, but persisted in staying with Elisha. How the child could not be raised by Gehazi, even though he used the authority of Elisha's staff in his efforts to recover life. How Elisha arrived at the home to find the child lying on his special bed, and shut himself in that prophet's chamber with the problem, getting on to the bed with it. My Bible tells me that he "stretched himself upon him" (v.34), but the margin gives me a better alternative, "he bowed himself". If ever a translation were unrealistic this is, for a grown man could never by any possible reasoning have to stretch himself to measure up to a small boy, who could sit on his mother's lap. The man did not have to stretch himself, what he had to do was rather to contract himself in order to be intimately identified with him. I notice that Ronald Knox gives the translation, "bending down close", a picture, surely, of the Saviour's complete identification with us in our mortal need. Elisha repeated this action seven times (v.35 margin) (forget all about the "sneezing"); and so the miracle happened. Elisha was proved indeed to be a man of God, and the woman's faith affirmation that "everything was all right" was fully vindicated.
Once more the woman was found bowed to the ground at the feet of Elisha, this time in wondering worship. Those who so bow as they cast their burdens on the Lord and look in faith to Him will always find such a gracious response that they will be overwhelmed by a similar sense of adoring wonder. It may take time. It will probably involve a real test of patience. The principle, [116/117] however, is absolutely certain, namely that what God has given to us as a solemn and privileged trust may (and probably will) have to go right down into death so that it may be established in the power of resurrection. Have we left our dead hopes on their own bed and given up in despair? Have we kept them on our own bed and given ourselves to fruitless efforts of recovery? Or have we obeyed the Lord's command to cast all our burdens upon Him? Paul told the Corinthians that he himself had to learn this lesson, so it is not surprising if we have not yet learned it. But it is there to be learned, and the Shunammite mother may help us to grasp the principle.
