Everything’s All Right

Do you remember the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4? Though she had no children, a stigma that would have been hard to bear in that day and age, she didn’t hide away in her house, bemoaning her plight. She was on the lookout for how she could serve and found just the right opportunity in the prophet Elisha. What started out as an invitation to feed him each time he passed through their town, quickly turned into a building project wherein she and her husband provided him with his very own room to stay in when he came to town. God used the Shunammite and her husband to bless Elisha and, in turn, she received a very unexpected blessing…an open womb through which God gave her a son. 
Several years later, her joy turned to dread when her son dies in her arms. She lays him on the prophet’s bed, closes the door behind her and…..

-runs out of the house screaming wildly for a doctor

-finds her husband and demands that he do something

-shakes her fists at God

-collapses in a heap and cries out for God to end her life, too

Some of those scenarios seem probable, all of those scenarios are possible…we might even call them natural reactions to a traumatic situation…but none of those scenarios are recorded in Scripture. 

I Kings 4 says she calmly asks her husband to help her get a donkey so she can ride out to the man of God (Elisha). Her response when he asks why, and again when she encounters the questions of Elisha’s servant is: 

“Everything’s all right.”

WHAT????? Nothing is all right. Her son has just died in her arms. How can everything be all right?! 

Well, if you know the rest of the story, you remember that the Shunammite woman reaches Elisha, takes him back to her house, and becomes the vessel through whom God raises her son from the dead. 

Everything’s all right. 

It sounds so simple, and yet the faith this Shunammite woman shows is miraculous (as all true faith is, being a gift from God). She was fully convinced that the God who had opened her womb was just as capable of raising her son from the dead. She knew the character of God and her right thinking informed her words and her actions in a way that is astonishing and beautiful. 

I pray the Lord spares me from the anguish of losing one of my children in the coming years, but I am also fully convinced that the faith God gave the Shunammite woman is the same faith that lives in me, by His grace…and lives in all those whom He has saved! What hope! What encouragement! What peace is ours! May we be people of the Word, who cling to the character of our God in such a way that our thinking is renewed, thus transforming our words and actions. So, whether the trial be big or small, we, too, can say: 

Everything’s all right. 


When peace like a river attendeth my way, 
When sorrows like sea billows roll. 
Whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say, 
“It is well, it is well with my soul.”    
Horatio G. Spafford 








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