Make Room for Your Miracle (13 page)

“Help me get him to the house,” I said.

Taking my child on my lap, I gently bathed his face and neck with a cloth dipped in cool water. His curly dark hair, wet from his own sweat and the water I poured, curled around my fingertips like clinging vines.

After a few minutes, Habakkuk’s eyes fluttered open. He weakly clutched my hand and squeezed his eyes shut in pain, his face a grimace. A tremor ran down his torso and my own body reacted with trembling. I am sure I comforted him, but with what words who could remember now? He certainly did not hear them.

I continued bathing him with the cool water. The locusts sang in the heat beyond the wall. Their trills sounded to me like an army of Levite priests standing line by line and blaring tiny shofars. I lifted my voice in a lullaby to drown out the mournful droning.

I stayed with him on my lap until noon.

Habakkuk became less and less animated. His breathing grew faint. My tension rose as one after the other of the servants would peer into the dimness with wide, wondering eyes.

One maid came to tell me that Joktan had called for food and drink to be delivered to his men in the field. The clouds were growing darker, and he could not take a chance that it would not rain. A wet crop could easily mildew, and much of the wheat would be lost. My husband had asked men of our city to come and help cut and sheaf the wheat, and they would likely be working by lamplight through the night to bring the harvest into our barns.

I would not tell him what I feared. In hope against hope perhaps the boy would awaken. I placed two fingers on his hot neck. His pulse felt weaker still. My eyes filled with fearful waters, but I subdued them and gave out orders for portions to be prepared for the laborers in the harvest. The servants passed about me opening clay vessels, pouring out oil and weighing out olives and dried fruits. A stack of freshly made flatbread was wrapped in a clean cloth. In short order my little band of serving maids was sent away into our fields with food and drink for the men.

In this, the year of our greatest harvest, the most frightful specter loomed. It raged against all the goodness that had overtaken us, all the hopes that had been fulfilled. And I was impotent to intervene. I could not protect the hearth I had watched over so faithfully. My arm was too short to save my son. I sat with his listless body, useless to do anything but pour water over his head and reassure him of my love. And in the midst of my quiet murmuring, Habakkuk slipped away.

I had been afraid to move him much, but now I sat up rigid and laid both hands upon his shoulders. His head lolled to one side, and I shook him as if I could wake him. “Do you hear me? Son! Son!”

I shut my eyes against his face and prayed with all my might that he would suddenly inhale and breathe in life.

I opened them in disbelief. My world and all its courses stopped.

Was this the end of all of it? Had God’s promise been fulfilled? Was this—this horrid half measure of my joy—the end of it?

Something inside of me refused to let that question go unanswered.

This cannot be! It should not be!

It shall not be.

I gathered the boy up and rose from where I had sat holding him these past hours. Clutching him tightly, I felt that he had no weight at all. I refused to accept that his breath no longer came forth from his lips. Up I went. Each step I took laid weight upon the strength of my resolve. I had built these stairs to make the way for the man of God to come to the room we made for him. He had trodden those stairs with frequency, and every day he made his abode with us our house was filled with peace. At the top of these stairs the prophet’s chamber lay. On the threshold of its door the word of promise had come to me. Those words had given my son his very name: embrace.

I was glad everyone was in the fields. Under the cover of distraction with the harvest I could keep the servants’ attention, as well as Joktan’s, elsewhere. I feared they would restrain me if they knew. They would say the grief was too much. They would call Joktan in from the field, and he would command me to my bed, and they would take him. Take Habakkuk and lay him in the grave.

I would have none of that. I made my plan as I ascended the stairs. I would speak to no one in my household, for to speak of it seemed to agree with death and give it permission to keep its hold upon my son. I would drive it out. He would drive it out—the man of God from whose lips Habakkuk’s name had first come forth.

I entered Elisha’s room. It was just as he had left it. Its peace came out to meet me as though it did not notice Habakkuk’s motionless form. I passed over the threshold of promise and went straight to the bed where the man of God had lain that day he spoke. There I gently laid my Habakkuk. This was the bed from which the prophet had spoken forth God’s word of promise. It was from here the word of life had leapt toward my barren womb. The word of God had given him to us. The word of God that, when all the kingdoms of this world have failed, would have its way.

I looked upon the sleeping countenance of my son.

“Rest, love,” I told him quietly. “Mother shall soon come back to you here.”

I went out and shut the door. My hand trembled on the latch as I turned the key in the lock of the room we had built upon our roof. I held back my tears and clamped the tip of my tongue between my teeth until I thought I might bring blood. I slipped the key into my pocket, and the weight of that small bit of cast iron seemed more than the weight of the whole world. But my mind was quick with planning. I would go to the mountain of God as Abraham had done. I would see Him, Jehovah, the Lord who makes provision. Surely as there had been for my forbearer there would be for me a ram caught in the thicket of my prayers. I would go and come back again and bring back with me my living son!

I slipped quietly down the two flights of our stairs. Coming to the landing, I saw that our houseboy sat just beyond the porch of our courtyard.

“Izzak,” I called him. The boy looked up.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Go to your master in the field at once. Tell him your mistress has need of one of the servants and a donkey. Quickly,” I urged the boy to the door and set him off. “Go now!”

Izzak ran toward the gate and disappeared beyond the wall.

The sky was ominous. Wind whipped dry leaves across the courtyard, and they tumbled with scraping sounds across the threshold of our door.

It seemed an eternity that I waited. I paced the floor and prayed under my breath all the while. And as I walked up and down, back and forth in my house, the scenes of Abraham the father of our faith continued to spin around me. Like a web of comfort they seemed to shield me from fear.

By the time my husband sent the servant and a donkey back to me I was standing impatiently in the open courtyard, saddle in hand. I know the man must have been startled to find me, the mistress of this great house, ready like a barn boy with the donkey’s tack.

“Here I am, mistress,” he approached me with a questioning look, leading a donkey. “Forgive me, my lady, but our master begs to know if there is something urgent.” The man turned about indicating the harvest field. “The harvest—”

I had no patience for questions. I thrust the saddle toward him. “Saddle the donkey,” I barked. Then I turned to address the houseboy.

“Izzak!”

He stumbled forward stuttering, “M-my lady?”

“Return to your master,” I recovered for a moment and took the boy kindly by his shoulders. “Tell him your mistress sends this message: ‘All is well.’”

“Yes, ma’am.” He hurried away.

In another moment Joktan himself strode through the gate, the out of breath houseboy at his heels.

“What is this, wife?” Joktan exclaimed as he crossed our courtyard. The dust of harvest covered him, and his shirtsleeves were wet with sweat.

“I am going quickly to the man of God,” I told him, nodding to the servant to mount.

“By heaven, wife. Why would you go today?”

“Peace, Joktan. All is well.” I put my foot into the stirrup and swung myself up behind the servant. “I will return.” I nudged the donkey on with my heels, and the servant obligingly guided him on.

Joktan looked stunned as we passed out of the courtyard. I avoided even a second glance in his direction. The only thoughts I would entertain were those of Abraham and his words to the servant as he went into the mountain, “The lad and I will go yonder and worship and will come back to you again.”

I fingered the key tucked within the folds of my dress and closed my eyes against the dust that whipped into our eyes from the darkening skies as we turned onto the open road. On we rode, soon passing the fields where the threshing had begun, the harvesters bobbing like storks. I clung to the servant’s back as the donkey carried us speedily away to the mountain marking Carmel in the distance. There I knew I would find the man of God.

And We Listen . . .

It might not seem possible, but it is often true: Things that are spoken in the glory and fulfilled in the glory will be tested. Sometimes the very thing that God gave you could be dying or dead and you think,
Why? What happened?
We saw in chapter 2 that the temptation in times of loss is to think,
It must be my fault.
This happens with dreams we hold in our hearts, and it happens when we have actually held the promise in our hands and then lost it:
What did I do wrong? I must have handled this badly.

If things that you have received from God have been attacked, you did not suddenly drop out of the will of God. Your setback is God’s setup for “miracles plus!” In other words, when something dies it is not the time to give up. The battle is just beginning.

This woman’s baby, who was given through an anointed word, was attacked, in our estimation, by the devil. The child cried out, “My head, my head!” And he died. Was this the end? No, it was just the beginning! God was about to pull out His sword and do battle on her behalf. We might think that a dead womb bringing forth a child was miracle enough, but God was going to do something even greater. She did not get just one miracle; she got the impossible miracle. And you can, too.

Have you made a place for the Lord to rest? Where the glory was, it will come again. The Shunammite’s story is emblematic of this. The enemy, the ultimate enemy, death, came and knocked on her door, but she was not fazed. God had given her a gift, a miracle provision, and she was not about to let it be stolen. She handled it in the most wonderful, amazing way. She had experienced God’s power. She expected, therefore, that the same God of miracles would reveal Himself and defend the gift He had given her.

Her spirit, her example, her story inspire us today in every circumstance of life, wherever we are. When something troubling knocks on our doors, whether it is financial need, an infirmity or even death itself, believers should not be fazed. We are able to use that challenge as a vehicle to go from glory to glory, or into the sphere of faith beyond faith.

Here are several keys that we have found to open the way from faith to faith, from grace to grace and from glory to glory—when God’s promises seem broken.

Keep Your Focus on God

Often people let go at the point of testing. They reach a place in the battle where they say, “Well, God never intended to give it to me,” and they lose the fight by just leaving it alone. Maybe it is a ministry or a business. Maybe it is a relationship or a healing.

We must expect a contest for our faith. We may go through stringent testing, but the Bible says that when God blesses, He blesses with no sorrow added. The things He touches have His life in them. Life that conquers death. Remember that the consummate end of our salvation is resurrection from the dead.

The Shunammite understood this. After she had five wonderful years with this amazing miracle blessing, suddenly one day he died in her lap. He was fine in the morning. He went out to be with his dad in the field. But he got a terrible headache, and by noon he was dead. Look at this woman’s response. She took the child whom God had given her into the room that she had provided and waited for God to raise him. She closed that door and went out. She went up to the mountain of the Lord.

We read an interesting report in a medical publication by a specialist in the field of malaria. He mentioned the story of the Shunammite’s son and suggested that the child likely contracted cerebral malaria, which strikes and kills quickly.

I, Mahesh, was ministering in the Congo once and had forgotten to take the anti-malaria pill. I contracted cerebral malaria, and I never want to have that pain in my head ever again. It is pain that is deep and constant, and the misery is terrible. You are in pain so much that you want to die, and it goes on and on. In my case it went on for hours and hours. We told our prayer teams based here at home about it. They prayed for me and I was healed overnight. So I sort of have a feeling of what the Shunammite’s boy was going through.

There is a verse in the Bible that is often misunderstood about our battle with the enemy. Actually, the punctuation in the King James Version of this verse suggests a meaning that later versions seem to rectify. Here is the familiar King James translation of Isaiah 59:19: “So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.”

Later translations look at this picture from a different angle. Here are two examples.

From the west, men will fear the name of the Lord, and from the rising of the sun, they will revere his glory. For he will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along.

NIV

So they will fear the name of the Lord from the west and His glory from the rising of the sun, for He will come like a rushing stream which the wind of the Lord drives.

NASB

We have observed that God often allows evil to mature like fruit ripening on a tree. During that process, circumstances for the righteous may become very difficult and even disheartening. However, it is the glory of those who know their God not to despair but to continue expecting His appearance—when light will triumph over darkness—just as the children of Israel waited four hundred years for their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. As John said of Jesus in his gospel, “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overwhelm it” (see John 1:5). Just when it may appear all hope is gone and there is no possibility for good to bring a turn-around, the glory of the Lord appears. This Scripture says in a word what we all must realize. In the final analysis, God will Himself defend His word, His people and His mission. And, in the fullness of time, He will come down and push back the presence and power of the enemy in order to redeem His covenant people and make a way for them. As Moses saw when He parted the sea, or as David experienced Him at Baal Perazim, He is the God who breaks through like a flood.