Have you ever had a dream to ____________ (fill in the blank) and it ended up being a bit of a nightmare by the time it turned into reality? Yeah, I know, too close to home, eh?
The reality of the woman in the story was stark. Sin of the past, famine, death of a son etc. This is horrible stuff. But once she got to see it through God’s eyes, things changed up… Check it out:
The Back Story (1 Kings 17:17-24)
The woman gave up her food for Elijah and was blessed with abundance in return. But the woman’s son got sick, got sicker and then died. She was heartbroken. (If you have ever lost anyone, you will totally understand. Even someone moving away can be like a living death!)
The woman was so grieved that she accused Elijah that this was a reminder of her sin. (no other words were mentioned about what that was). But whatever it was, it certainly haunted her.
Elijah was distraught and cried out to God. He certainly didn’t understand why the series of events had to take place. It made no sense to him, for God to save this small family through the famine, only to have the boy die.
He placed himself on and stretched himself on the dead child, and prayed. God’s heart was moved and all was restored! He gave the boy back to his mother. “Look!, your son is alive!”(vs. 23). It seems that there was shock in Elijah’s voice too, FYI (note the exclamation mark).
The woman responded by acknowledging God’s word in Elijah. “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD from your mouth is the truth” (vs. 24).
Thoughts
This mama was obviously a follower of God. Much was required of her (giving of her last meal to a prophet rather than her dying son) and she passed that test. However, the enemy wanted to strike the heart of this mama deeper than before. Nothing hurts more than a miracle followed by a devastation. However, God wanted the glory of the outcome to produce faith and faith to produce more exploits for the goodness of God to be experienced. It was done so that he could address the condemnation issue once and for all. (Pause) All THAT was done so love could rule the day. (Pause). This can only be produced in the fires of pain and surrender to God’s truth.
I love this woman. She is much like me.
Deeper Love than you Think – How often don’t we think that God is judging us. Paying us back for the mistakes, the deliberate (but now confessed) sins of the past. She’s no different. I’m no different. “What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?” Do you hear the pain in her heart? Do you hear the remorse of her mistake?
Wait…Do you hear the voice of condemnation???
That voice wasn’t God’s.
She was struggling with what she thought was God’s judgement but really was condemnation. How can you tell the difference when it pounces on you?
That’s right. She was living in the death of condemnation. Godly sorrow, brings about “sorry”, change and doesn’t live in the past, accepting forgiveness for what went wrong.
See, her heart was heavy with trying to figure out how to avoid judgement rather than accepting forgiveness. Sometime forgiveness can be more painful than judgement. Some times love can hurt more than a smack in the back of the head. Why? Because forgiveness and love are vulnerable. It’s real and can sneak past our defenses. That said, when love, real love, touches a wound, it heals. When judgement touches it, if closes over and festers.
Circumstances – We don’t have control over most circumstances in our lives and many of them just don’t’ make sense. (like the woman’s son passing away, after he was saved through much of the famine) We can’t even begin to understand, it hurts our brains to make sense of it all.
All I know is that when we are at the end of ourselves and dead inside, he meets us with outstretched arms, like Elijah and the boy. He sees our heart and works things in a way that is restorative in nature.
I love this story, because all comes right in the end, even death was reversed. I know, that it doesn’t ALWAYS happen that way. But why not? Why can’t we ask for the miraculous, every time? Does God run out? Certainly not.
Ok. Once again, I know that the miraculous doesn’t happen every time. But at the very least, we can rest in the miracle of the goodness and love of that God has for us and the very best, we can let ourselves be ordinary and let God be miraculous, even uprooting the laws of death.
God’s Words – God had been trying to get her heart to understand His love for her. It was when He tackled the lie of condemnation in her heart did her heart let go of condemnation to embrace the truth of living in God’s love.
What about us? How’s your heart? I know mine really, really wonders if I can trust God’s love for me or if He’ll come through for me and my circumstances. My default is wondering if I have to DO SOMETHING to make it happen. Do you wonder that too?
What if we learned, from the heart, that resting in God’s love for us is productive? What if we allowed God to be God? And what if we got our head around His thoughts towards us and lived out of THAT reality? Please live out of THOSE thoughts, my darling.
What do you think would happen to us all if we viewed our circumstances through HIS eyes?
Perhaps if the widow were around today, she would have written this song herself.