John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: November 13

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John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: November 13


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The Dead Child

1Ki_17:15-24

How Elijah employed himself all the time he was at Zarephath we know not. If he had been in Israel, we might guess that he taught and governed the schools of the prophets. But he had nothing of this kind to occupy him at Zarephath; and it is clear that he kept himself as private as possible, as he must have been aware that Ahab sought him diligently; and if he had known where he was, his influence at the court of Tyre was amply sufficient to cause him to be given up. To the looker-on he might seem to be leading an idle life. But he whom the world calls idle is often “busiest most” when he seems least occupied. To a holy man, meditation and prayer are an occupation, and make time pass swiftly. Then, such a man as Elijah must have felt a generous pleasure in leading the comparatively untutored, but open, mind of this poor widow to the true conceptions of the God of Israel, and the great designs of his grace and providence. Her son, also, could hardly escape his earnest solicitude; and we cannot doubt that he labored much to educate his mind in all true knowledge.

He became interested in this lonely pair, whose lives he had been the means of preserving. He loved them. It was a grief of heart, a dreadful shock to him, to learn one day that the boy was dead, had died suddenly; and to discern, through the form which the grief of the mother took, that by some process of reasoning—or rather, perhaps, of unreasoning feeling, which it is difficult to follow with certainty—she ascribed this calamity to his presence. Consider that this boy was her only child, and that she was a widow—to estimate the extent of her loss and the agony of her spirit. To lose one of many in death, is a most awful and trying thing; how hard, then, to lose the one who stands alone, and besides whom there is no other to us! When we behold that a child so dear

&mdash—“Like a flower crusht, with a blast is dead,

And ere full time hangs down his smiling head;”

how many sweet interests in life, how many hopes for the time to come, go down to the dust with him! The purest and most heart-felt enjoyment which life offers to a mother in the society of her little child, is cut off forever. The hope, the mother’s hope, of great and good things to come from this her son, is lost for her. “The live coal that was left,” and which she had reckoned that time would raise to a cheerful flame to warm her home, and to preserve and illustrate the name and memory of his dead father, is gone out—is quenched in darkness. The arms which so often clung caressingly around her, and whose future strength promised to be as a staff to her old age, are stiff in death. The eyes which glistened so lovingly when she came near, now know her not. The little tongue, whose guileless prattle had made the long days of her bereavement short, is now silent as that of “the mute dove.” Alas! alas! that it should ever be a mother’s lot to close in death the eyes of one whose pious duty, if spared, should be in future years to press down her own eyelids. This is one of the great mysteries of life, to be solved only thoroughly, only fully to our satisfaction, in that day when, passing ourselves the gates of light, we behold all our lost ones gather around our feet.

We marvel not that the poor widow of Zarephath, thus suddenly smitten, spoke in the bitterness of her spirit to Elijah—“What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? art thou come to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?” This is manifestly founded on the notion, prevalent in those days, that sickness and untimely deaths were special judgments from heaven; and it would appear, that the consciousness of sin having been awakened in the breast of this woman, by the views of the Divine character which Elijah had set before her, and by the observation of the man of God’s holy life and conversation, she seems to have thought that the God of Israel had probably, at the instance of his prophet, taken this means of impressing her with a sense of her unworthiness.

The imputation, however interpreted, upon one who had really been the means of preserving her son’s life, as well as her own, so long, was unjust to him, and perhaps had, under other circumstances, kindled up his naturally warm temper. As it was, her deep affliction left room for no feeling but commiseration, which seems to have been strong enough to make him feel disposed, for the moment, to question the Lord’s justice and mercy in bringing this deep affliction upon one who had so befriended his servant. These are among the occasions on which the best and holiest of men often lose the soundness of their judgment; and Elijah, although a wonderful man, was still a man of like passions as we are. He said nothing before the woman. He had not the heart to reprove her, in her grief, for the harsh suspicion that he had been instrumental in bringing this misery upon her. The bereaved, and not yet wholly chastened heart, seeks some object on which to wreak its sense of wrong. God himself is the real object of this feeling; but, dreading to smite the throne of heaven, the distressed soul seeks, and is glad to find, some intermediate object of its indignation. Elijah understood this, and made no attempt to cast back the words which this poor childless widow flung forth in the trouble of her spirit. He forbore to tell her, that such words as these showed her need of the affliction that had come upon her. He simply asked her to give him the child; and on receiving the corpse from her bosom, where it lay, he bore it away to his own little garret, and laid it down upon his bed. There he gave free vent to his strong emotions. Remember that the most marked characteristic of Elijah was the strength of his will, the indomitable character of his faith. Our Lord says—“The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”

Now Elijah was one of those who take the kingdom of heaven by force—who storm its crystal walls in unconquerable faith, and batter them with prayers that will not be denied. To use fitly the compulsive prayers of Elijah, it is needful to have Elijah’s faith—just as only one who wrestles till break of day as Jacob did, could dare to say—“I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” Behold this great man in his chamber, alone with the corpse of that fair child. See how vehemently he strides up and down, gradually working himself up to the height of the great demand which gleams before his thought. Hear him. He ventures to expostulate; humbly indeed, but with some soreness of feeling, natural enough—only too natural—to one who began to think that afflictions attended him wherever he went. Trouble he could bear, so that it came upon himself alone; but it was hard to feel that his presence brought nothing but misery to those who befriended him most. “O Lord my God,” he cried, “hast thou brought evil upon the woman with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son? “This thought was hard to bear. Again, he lashes himself up to his great purpose, which had only not crossed the mind of man since the beginning of the world, because no man before had the same degree of faith—the faith to deem it possible that the dead might be restored to life at man’s urgent prayer. It is done. His purpose is taken. The child shall live. Nothing is too hard for the Lord. It is as easy for him to give back life as to take it: and he will do this if asked with adequate faith Elijah knew that men too often expect to move the mountains by such faith as suffices not to shake the mole-hills; and that because, from the insufficiency of the means, the hoped for results do not follow, the power of faith is disparaged. But he felt the true mountain-moving faith heaving strong within him, and he gave it unrestrained vent. He threw himself upon the corpse, as if, in the vehement energy of his will, to force his own life into it; and the while he cried, with mighty and resistless urgency, to God, to send back to this cold frame the breath he had taken.

Faith conquered. It was adequate, and therefore irresistible. The fleeing soul was arrested in mid-career, and sent back to its earthly house. The child revived; and we may conceive the deep emotion with which the forlorn widow received—far past all her hopes or thoughts—her living son from the hands of the prophet. The effect, was salutary. It removed all lingering doubt in her heathen-trained mind of the mission of the prophet, and of the truth of the great things he had so often told her. “Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word in thy month is truth.”