Make Room for Your Miracle (11 page)

“Hold a moment, mistress,” he said.

I turned on the stair.

“Please come,” he motioned me back and across the roof once again.

This time I heard the voice of the prophet.

“Shunammite, come near to me,” Elisha said.

I approached Elisha’s door.

“Sir?” I said.

Out of the dim room Elisha spoke. “Come nearer.”

Gehazi stepped aside and motioned me to the threshold. This was a place of intimacy with the man of God such as I had never experienced. Usually I was in the presence of Joktan or my maids or in the company of those who went to Carmel to hear him. His eyes intensified as he gazed upon me. The air around me changed. It felt like the crispness of a coming storm. He spoke abruptly.

“You have no children in this house?”

His words seemed to rumble through my being like silent thunder. A moment later the shock of the question seemed to fling me headlong back down that long dark valley, that place where anguish preys on unanswered prayers. All my past humiliation, the begging, hoping, questioning, denial and even rage came tumbling out of my heart.

My breath stuttered. “N-n . . .” I wondered why the word would not come out. I groped for the rest of it. “None of my own,” I finally heard myself say.

They say a deep wound must heal from the inside out, else it will fester and the whole body will die of its infection. But I thought that to pursue such a healing would take more time and tinctures than one could possibly employ. How dare he open my deep wound now so carelessly? He surely knew little of the misery his words caused, or he would not have spoken them.

“It shall be about this time next year,” Elisha continued, “at the time of the spring lambing.” I remember he paused. The sound of his voice seemed hardly to touch the surface of time and space around us.

“You shall embrace a son,” he said at last.

A fire of emotion seared my face, leaving my cheeks burning.

What language was this? If those words had been spoken by any other man than this, our trusted guest, the compass of Israel in those days of darkness, perhaps I could have shielded myself from their piercing tips. Did he say it once or time after time?

Embrace a son . . . embrace a son . . . the words echoed. A son. The hope of my inheritance, the song of my heart once whispered in gentle expectation when I was young. A son. The sound reverberated off the canyon walls of my empty womb.

Liar! I wanted to shriek back. Deceiver! Yet it was the calm voice of one long dead with which I answered him.

“No, my lord!” I whispered. “Do not deceive me, sir.” As I lowered my eyes I was weeping for my children who were not. I was Hannah. I was Rachel. I was every human who had failed at being.

I backed away and rushed from his room. The room we had built for him on our wall.

But Elisha did not see my shame. The prophet’s limpid eyes seemed to be looking through me, and I would later learn that he gazed upon a babe, a boy, with eyes the color of dates like his mother’s. A perfect son, fat and robust, with a head of curling dark hair, skin the color of honey. The tiny babe was suspended, swaddled there within my woman’s form. Elisha could see him clearly.

I, however, fled down the stairs and into my bedchamber, passing a housemaid who met me with a startled look. I—who was usually calm and at peace— charged past her as if being chased by Philistines with their spears. Once alone I buried my face in a soft linen pillow until my breath returned to normal.

Then, tired and spent, I rose and washed my face. Seeking at least cosmetic composure, I pulled the tangled strands of my wild hair back into my hair bands and redressed my eyes with softened lines of kohl to hide their crimson rims. I pinched my cheeks and brushed down the front of my tunic, straightening my belt and readjusting the folds of my skirt as I went out. Ignoring the back of my housemaid busying herself with her hand broom at the end of the hall, I descended the stair and entered the main floor, once again the collected mistress of my household. I crossed to the kitchen and resumed oversight of the preparation of my guests’ evening meal as if nothing had happened.

At first I did not mention to Joktan or to anyone what the prophet had said. I laid the words aside. But in a few months’ time they seemed no longer to taunt me. I gave them permission to come and settle down in my heart. “You shall embrace a son!” And one night as I drifted off to sleep beside my husband, I knew it would be.

One morning, not too long afterward, I awoke and rushed from my bed, my head reeling and my stomach heaving. I passed the first month, and that unpleasantness was more pleasant than any preoccupation I had kept. I waited another month and when it was certain, I told Joktan that he was to be a father in his old age. Soon the word of it spread—that I, the Shunammite woman who had lived before her people in barrenness, lo, these many years, would embrace a son at last!

When the day came the midwife helped me upon the birthing stool. Beads of sweat poured down upon my brow as delirium and determination washed over me with every birth pang. With one final crashing effort a quarter century of prayers and looking to heaven bore fruit.

“A son!” the midwife exclaimed.

I gasped with relief then burst out in laughter and tears. At last I embraced my miracle. The one for which I had waited.

It became an ensign, our boy’s birth. A sign that nothing was impossible for the God of Israel. Our miracle, the son Jehovah gave, was much talked about from Shunem down to Elisha’s home city and back up to Carmel where the mountain overlooks the sea. In that same week, as providence would have it, we cut down our firstfruits and Joktan prepared the offering for our harvest to be presented before the Lord. We redeemed him as the Lord has said: “Consecrate to Me every first-born; man and beast, the first issue of every womb among the Israelites is Mine.”

I kept the purification ritual, and after the
mikvah
I prepared myself for our son’s entrance into the covenant of our fathers. On the eighth day after our son was born he was joined to the Lord in the covenant of Abraham by being circumcised according to the commandment. Joktan beamed with pride and pronounced his name in the presence of all for the first time: Habakkuk. It means “embrace.”

After I had fulfilled the days of my purification and could ride I persuaded Joktan to take Habakkuk and me to Carmel to dedicate the son He had given. After that they became so accustomed to my face that any one of them could say “the Shunammite” and all the others knew it meant me.

The man of God and his servant came in the first month of our son’s life. Elisha brought our boy a gift: a finely crafted box overlaid with beautiful filigreed work done by a silversmith in Jerusalem. It contained a scroll written by a scribe from the Temple.

Shema Yisrael Adonai elohenu Adonai echad.

Then the prophet recited the words of our fathers.

Joktan and I closed our eyes and drank in the blessing of the word of the Lord as Elisha pronounced them over us, our house and our son.

And We Listen . . .

When we have welcomed the Lord of glory, it is possible at any moment that our usual errands and chores will suddenly take us to that room of miracles where God has determined to come and rest.

Consider our story thus far. The man of God comes to town and meets a woman who compels him to share a meal at her house. He starts coming regularly because she treats him so well and does not demand anything from him. Then one day after a little while he is resting on his bed, and his conscience starts to strike him. He thinks,
You know, I have been eating this woman’s
food and enjoying her hospitality and—my gosh!—maybe she has
a need.

So he tells his servant to call her, and she comes and stands in the door. Elisha looks at her and, in the odd communication that prophets and their servants and people had in those days, he does not speak to her directly. He says to the servant, “Ask her what she needs.” The servant says, “What do you need?” and the answer is, “Nothing.”

“Hmm,” says Elisha. “We have to do something for her.”

So the servant says, “Well, Mr. Prophet, so discerning and full of revelation, have you noticed that she doesn’t have any children?”

And Elisha says, “Really? Now that you mention it, I guess not.”

Immediately and instantly the need that she has is brought before God. Now, He knows our needs. What He is trying to say to us is this: “I want to turn this thing around. And the way that I want to do it is to get you to take the focus off your needs and focus on My glory.”

Think about it. You know that this woman had wept many, many days in her life over her barrenness. It was a great shame; in fact, it was considered a curse in Israel. Not only did her husband have legal right to divorce her, but she had no future security. If she outlived her husband, all of their property would go to the king and she would live at the mercy of the elders. But when she had the opportunity to point out her desperate situation, she said nothing. “I am content. All is well.” That is the awesome heart of a servant. Contentment connected with the eternal promises of God. Prophecy announced miracle. And because of it, power and authority were released from the heavenlies.

God said, “You made a place for Me, and I filled it. Now I will fill that empty place in you. This time next year you will embrace a son.” Outrageous!

That is why her response seems understandable. “Don’t lie to me!” She had yielded her expectations. She had completely laid down the idea of a child. She was in her middle life and had resigned, consigned, come to peace with the likelihood that she would not produce an heir. Even in her barren state the Shunam-mite’s confession was “All is well.” She had filled the void with contentment in God. And godliness with contentment is great gain. She had settled all of her storms. That is why she was able to provide a place where her guests were completely at rest.

Contentment

In the past few decades there has been a progression from the “word of faith” type of prayer (known generally as “name it and claim it”) into formulaic prayer (such as “here are seven steps to success”). These contemporary messages suggest that the Good News ends for us here and now in our circumstances. This has subverted the eschatological hope and message of the Gospel—the truth that Christians are firmly rooted in eternity and that their rewards are being stored up in heaven. A further problem is that even if we get more and more “stuff ” and move from great position to even greater position, we never really know when we have reached the fulfillment of our goals because there is always something more to want.

The problem is one of contentment. Without it we will always be looking for more. Now obviously we have needs, and it is not wrong to pray about them. But if we get into a frenzy about what we want, it is possible to lose what we have. And, in fact, if room has not been made for the Presence to come and rest, then the opposite will come in—the spirit of restlessness.

Restlessness is rampant in our culture, and it is one of the main ways of providing an open door for the demonic. A false spirit will quickly start speaking to people who are not content. We see a great deal of this in the so-called prophetic movement today. People flit from one thing to the next, one place to the next, one revelation to the next. They are never satisfied. They need several dreams and prophetic words per week to keep them going. That is nothing more than a cycle of addiction that is feeding a religious spirit. It may be religious, it may be spiritual, but it is not the actual anointing Presence of the Holy Spirit. He will descend, but He will abide only for a moment and then leave.

The Bible likens a person with this restless spirit to a broken-down city, and if one’s walls are broken down, the demonic will find places to enter and roost. The priority in this situation is not to get so many supernatural revelations per hour, but to build up the walls of the personality with basic things like daily devotions, prayer, the sacraments and Scripture. Then when a true prophetic word comes, it is so powerful it changes lives.

When we face trials, we can either put God to the test in the wrong way by our demands or suffer the difficulty with peace, settle into contentment and see the visitation of the Lord. Remember how the angels came and ministered to Jesus? Instead of using His own strength to turn the stones into bread, He waited and let His flesh be crucified. In the end God gave Him all power and authority. The ideas of testing and healing go together, in fact. When Jesus said, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God,” He was anticipating Jehovah Rapha, “God Is Healer,” and Jehovah Jirah, “God Is Provider.” So when the devil was goading Him to give in to the discomfort of His circumstances, He was content because He was hungry only for the things of God. When Jesus quoted Scripture back to the Adversary, He was saying essentially, “All is well.”

Healing from the Inside Out

I, Mahesh, had the strangest medical experience several years ago when I had emergency surgery for diverticulitis in England. They cut me open and then sort of put me together but did not sew me back up. They just put on a dressing. Why? Because they wanted the healing to come from the inside out. They knew what they were doing because when I got healed, it was a strong healing.

This is a picture of how the Lord helps us through pain and suffering into that place of contentment where He can come and abide—He heals us from the inside out. If we try to stuff things down and seal them off, they will fester. That is why we see compulsive anger, bad temper, gossip, strife, evil speaking, depression—a wound has not been healed inside and it is festering. We need to face the wounds just as soon as we can— recognize the true feelings around them, admit them to God and let Jesus come and cleanse them.

It is the blood of the Lamb. It is Calvary. That is how the wounds are healed. Jesus is the one who does it. When He stood up and identified His ministry (see
LUKE
4) He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me anointing Me to bring healing,” and among the things He was sent to heal was the broken heart. Sometimes the need for this kind of healing is much greater than we realize. Psalm 109:22 says, “For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.” Psalm 34:18 says, “The
LORD
is near to those who have a broken heart.” So many of us are walking around like veterans who have been in wars but the wounds are still there, especially in our hearts.