Sunday, April 16, 2017

Saturday - II Kings 4 - Elisha, the Miracle Man

There are 5 different miracles recorded for us in this chapter.  Here is a list of them:
1.         Elisha helps a poor woman by multiplying her oil supply.
2.         Elisha helps a barren friend by granting to her a child.
3.         Elisha resurrects the aforementioned child from the dead.
4.         Elisha heals a pot of poison stew which had been polluted.
5.         Elisha multiplies a limited supply of bread.

Obviously, in every case, it wasn't really Elisha that did anything, it was God at work. Here is what I wonder about from these stories: don't you think Elisha must have deeply enjoyed the effects of his ministry?  When he told the poor widow woman to borrow many vessels to fill with oil from her one pot of oil, surely, he must have been smiling. When he told the barren woman (who had shown him charity) that she would no longer be childless, perhaps he chuckled at her response. When the boy who had been dead sneezed 7 times and opened his eyes, don't you think Elisha probably shook his head in awe? Did he eat of the miracle stew after it was healed or of the barley loves after they were cloned?

It's difficult for me to imagine all these things happening at the word of a crotchety old man wearing a hard frown and who had furrows on his brow. He was indeed holy and pious, but he was also a man of amazing spiritual power. And, let us not forget that the first 2 effects of the Spirit in the life of one of God's children are love and joy (Galatians 5:22). What a joy it must have been to be a special channel of God's blessings... as Elisha obviously was.

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