It Will Be All Right

We visited a new church this past Sunday. We knew the speaker and wanted to hear him preach. He began with the familiar story of Elisha and the Shunemite woman found in II Kings 4: 8-36. It is a story of faith and miracles. It is the story of a woman who showed great kindness to the Lord’s servant, Elisha. He often passed her home as he traveled about, and she, recognizing that Elisha was a holy man of God, urged her husband to build a small room on the roof of their home so that he would have a place to stop and rest on his journey.

In return for her generosity, Elisha asked if there was something he might do for her. When he discovered she and her aging husband didn’t have a son he promised her that she would give birth to a boy. The woman could hardly believe his words and begged him not to get her hopes up. After all, they were well past child-bearing years. By that next year she was holding a son in her arms.

If the story ended there, we would be be awed at the miracle and the goodness of God. But it didn’t end there. One dreadful day, the little boy died. I can only imagine the depth of grief. This precious child she had hardly dared hoped for – suddenly taken from her.

But this is where the story gets interesting. The preacher directed our attention to verses 21-23:

“She carried him up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, then shut the door and left him there. 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.’ ‘Why go today? he asked…But she said, “It will be all right.”

I have read this story countless times, but on Sunday morning those words stood out in bold print to me. “It will be all right.” The Shunemite woman didn’t cry out in agony or become frantic with grief. As the preacher pointed out, “She quietly made plans for another miracle .” She never even told her husband their little boy was dead. Such faith!

Somehow she understood that if God had done this miraculous thing for her, He could be trusted to do what was best now. She couldn’t have known just how that would look, but she did know that God is good. “It will be all right.”  Whatever the outcome – “It will be all right.” 

The preacher went on to share his own story – how he and his wife and daughters had planted a church; how they worked tirelessly for the Lord and saw the little church grow; how, just when things were going better than they could have hoped, he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. He told about the heartache and disappointment in having to place the church in another’s hands and walking away from the little church; about feeling so disappointed and angry with God.

Then he told how God gently drew him back – reminding him of His great love and His perfect plan, filling him with a peace beyond understanding. He began to see God work through his circumstances to bring others to faith – one miracle after another. Opportunities to speak began to come, but more powerful than any sermon he could preach was the “story” of his life – the living, breathing testimony of God’s grace and love.

Sometimes we get the miracle in exactly the way we hoped. The Shunemtite woman received her little boy back from the dead – an incredible miracle from God. The preacher prays for a miracle of healing, but his faith in the goodness of God has given him more than he could ever ask or think. He rests in God’s promise to take care of him in all circumstances and to work all things together for his good. It will be all right. Such faith.

Blessings,

Linda

P.S. The preacher is our son.

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