You may remember reading last. week that the prophet Elijah was lodging at the home of a widow woman in Zarephath, during the drought and famine in Israel.
This woman had only one son, and the boy must have been all the more dear to her since her husband was lead. But the boy fell sick, so very ick indeed that there was no breath left in him. Her heart was broken, and as she looked at the little lifeless body, she began to think. How often the presence of death in our homes makes us stop and think. It is well not to brush these thoughts aside, and not to try to forget, as the world would have us do.
She thought of her sin. I do not know what her sin was, but she knew it well, and she felt that God knew it too. You also know your sin, though others may never guess, but God knows it well. If you think of it in the presence of death, you may well be troubled as she was.
When Elijah came in, she held the dead child to her bosom and said, “O thou man of God, art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?” She felt this grief was a judgment from God which she deserved because of her sin. It is well indeed to see the hand of God when sorrow comes to us.
Elijah then carried the child up to his room in the loft, and laid him upon his own bed. Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and said, “O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him again.” I Kings 17:21.
God heard his prayer, and the child revived, and how gladly Elijah brought him down again. How the mother’s heart, too, overflowed as he said, “See, thy son liveth!” She confessed at once, “The word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth.” The woman’s sin had brought grief and sorrow, but as soon as she confessed her sin, God came in and blessed her. Have you done that, dear reader? Have you confessed your sin in His presence, and rejoiced in the truth of His word? Then go on in obedience to His Word, and your life story will have a happy ending too, with the Lord Jesus forever.
But we must sadly reinember that the broad road leads to destruction, and that many, very many, go on hiding their sin, choosing their own way, and ending in the lake of fire. Oh, my dear reader, this hopeless miserable pathway is not God’s choice for you.
ML 11/11/1951