Readings for the Second Sunday after Pentecost

1 Kings 17:17-24

Gal. 1:11-24

Luke 7:11-17

Passage for Meditation: Then the woman said to Elijah, "Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD from your mouth is the truth." 1 Kings 17:24

Devotion:  The poor widow had no husband to care for her.  She lived with her son, the one who would grow up to provide for her.  Then the unthinkable happens.  Her only son becomes ill.  She frantically tries all remedies know to her, but to no avail.  She sits beside her sick son holding his hand and stoking his hair as his breath becomes more and more labored until he finally draws his last breath and dies.

Anger, frustration, pain beyond pain overwhelms her.  She cries out to Elijah, the prophet who had been rooming with the widow and her son and says, "What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?"

“Why me?  What have I done so wrong that God should do this to me?  Why take his life and not mine?”  Sound familiar?

Elijah takes the dead son to his room, lays his lifeless body on his bed and cries out to God confused and bewildered, "O LORD my God, have you brought tragedy also upon this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?"  He stretched himself over the son three times and pleaded for God’s mercy- that He might grant life to the lifeless.  The Lord shows himself merciful and restores the boys life.

Now comes the passage for meditation, the reaction of the widow.  She sees God’s hand at work through the means of the prophet Elijah.  She sees the mercy of God by His actions of bringing life from death.  She glimpsed in faith on a small scale what Jesus would bring in large scale by his death and resurrection- the pouring out of His mercy on mankind as he stretched out his body to die- to rise from death and grant the promise of life everlasting to all who believe. She sees in faith the God who kills and makes alive!