Make Room for Your Miracle (2 page)
My small world turned within a greater one. I was the daughter of devout parents who feared the Lord and served Him all their days. I learned my ways from a mother who was never idle—with her tongue or her hands. I discovered early that a person’s intrinsic value was based entirely on one’s ability to contribute in practical ways to the survival of the clan into which one was born. Daughters, at about age thirteen, were married out of the family, but generally within their tribal clan. The more beautiful in body and serene in spirit they were, the better the choice of a mate and, therefore, the better the family fared. Sons inherited their fathers’ estates and brought wives—hopefully prolific ones— into the family, and so a son was twice as beneficial as a daughter. But that does not mean we daughters were loved less. I desired what is called a “meek and quiet” spirit because it pleased my father.
Do not imagine my life was an easy one though I was born to favor and influence. It was not wealth or influence that caused my story to be recorded in the holy Scriptures. My story is kept alive to help you learn to make a permanent place for the Lord and His anointing as I learned to do. I have waited long to speak. My testimony is a vibrant strand woven into the wide and beautiful tapestry of what it means to have faith in God.
Man or woman, old and young, you and I share the human condition. We all experience life, death, hope, despair, joy, sorrow, desire, rejection, belief and unbelief, fear and peace. And we share the search for that One who has the answers we seek. He is the same, yesterday, today and forever. Where He abides wholeness and well-being abide. In the midst of our circumstances, and sometimes because of them, God comes to work His great miracles. As He did for me, He can do for you. He is the God of miracles. You will find He is the answer to your deepest longings.
And We Listen . . .
The original intention of God for mankind has always been to create a permanent dwelling place for Himself. Jesus said,
“Look at me. I stand at the door. I knock. If you hear me call and open the door, I’ll come right in and sit down to supper with you. Conquerors will sit alongside me at the head table,just as I, having conquered, took the place of honor at the side of my Father. That’s my gift to the conquerors!”
Revelation 3:20, MESSAGE
When biblical narrative suddenly turns from a national event of deep and lasting impact, like the battle with Moab, to intimate detail of an unnamed woman from an obscure city in the Galilee, it shows us the Divine perspective. Set against the dark backdrop of national crisis and looming judgment, the prophet diverts suddenly to become a frequent guest of the house in Shunem. This story becomes an icon to the greatness of our God. And His greatness makes us great. Matters of a barren woman and the concerns of a king are equally significant to Him.
Whenever Elisha came knocking this great woman opened her door and gladly invited him into her home to rest. As she welcomed God’s prophetic messenger, the Master came in with him. Elisha represents the double portion, miracles
plus
! He is the prophetic pre-type of Jesus, the High Priest of everyone who believes.
The Shunammite demonstrates a combination of character traits that make room for miracles. She looked well to the ways of her household, combining reverent simplicity and moral rectitude with warm domestic affections and earnest piety. She exercised “true religion.” Yet she carried extraordinary confidence and authority, a kind of independence from unbelief, such that when her household was threatened she was undaunted and fearless. Not unlike Abishag from Shunem, who won the heart of King David, our Shunammite caught the attention of the Lord’s messenger and captured the heart of God. When she most needed a demonstration of His hand, He gladly showed it.
We are about to uncover secrets of the faith that the Shunam-mite exercised to receive the gift of a great miracle. And when the gift was stolen this great woman pursued the Source of miracles and would not let Him go until she had recovered all. Her victory became the seed of more miracles. From resurrection to recovery to restitution, a heart of faith and relentless refusal to give in to difficulty made room for ongoing provision and a rich heritage for generations to come.
Do you have a hope, a dream, an impossibility that you long to be made possible? As you, like the Shunammite, make room for our miracle-working God, you make room for your miracle. Let’s discover how.
Remember now your Creator in the days of
your youth, before the difficult days come, and
the years draw near when you say, “I have no
pleasure in them.”
Ecclesiastes 12:1
The Shunammite Speaks . . .
Being born into a house in Israel in the Iron Age meant religion was a priority—everyone worshiped something and kept sacrosanct religious rituals. Everything one did from the moment of birth to the moment of death, like everything one did from sunrise to sunset, was influenced if not mandated by religion. Superstition and faith competed. For those of us who feared the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, remembering one’s history, the workings of our God in the lives of our people, was key to maintaining our identity. Ours was the only God you could not see with your eyes. You had to look with eyes of faith for His footprints in order to follow.
I rarely saw a scroll inscribed with stories from the past. For our history to live, we depended on telling and retelling by holy men or clan fathers or, as in the case of my father, those who had learned it well from their own fathers and then told it to their children. Since we lived far from Jerusalem—a family’s caravan could make the trip in two days—we generally depended on devout men to come to us, or we would go to them on certain holy days. It had been thus since King Solomon’s realm divided into the Northern and Southern Kingdoms just half a century before my childhood.
King Jeroboam, who was crowned to lead the ten northern tribes that did not want further alliance with King Solomon’s progeny, built great bulls in Dan and Bethel to aid our people in worship. Father speculated that the king did not want anyone in his realm to return to Jerusalem for worship and perhaps gradually shift allegiance back to the royal line. We had no Levites in the north now. The prophets kept their residence in some of the cities in Ephraim, but they did not often turn in at Shunem. We would carry our gifts and offerings to the prophets at Carmel and hear them there. The journey took half a day’s travel, west toward the great sea. As it has tended to do from before time began, faith toward Jehovah God created trouble even then.
My father was the patriarch of our compound and well respected in Shunem. He was the fount of our existence— though Grandmother and Mother were the water of his spring. It was his name we bore, his food we cooked, his house we kept, his family we held together and carried on. He had given us life and whenever life was taken away we recognized the preciousness of it all the more.
Those were days I got my first lessons in the politics of our nation, divided as it was. Just south of our pleasant little “island”—by that I mean the outcrop that was the compound of my father’s house in Shunem—was another dwelling. The contrast was stark even to my young eye. Only an hour’s ride by donkey, situated atop Jezreel like a pinnacle, was the opulent summer palace of King Ahab and his serpent-wife, Jezebel.
“Island of garbage.” That’s what her name meant in our language. What father would name his child so? A priest, no less! Obviously, as my father said, blind guides were leading the blind.
Father would spend the whole of our Shabbat with his mind on Jehovah God. It was our day of rest. With no chores to do, at least for the moment—for every child was incorporated into the family workforce at some level as soon as he was weaned—I loved sitting with him in the shade of our olive trees. They had grown from the cuttings that his father had carried back from Jerusalem when he traveled there for Sukkot years before. Our trees were by this time my father’s age and had entered their prime for bearing oil. Shunem had its own olive and wine presses, and when harvest came the community worked together. It was always a time of great rejoicing. The streets were filled with the sounds of us children, playing and laughing.
The verdant trees spread their branches in the field behind our house—living testimony to the promise from Jehovah that the olive would flourish in our land. We used oil for everything. Oil for offerings. Oil for cooking. Oil for eating. Oil for light. Oil for healing cuts. Oil for softening our skin. Oil for life itself—all from these trees. I looked up into the low drifting limbs with their sprouts of thick dusty green leaves. Father was talking on this particular day about another kind of oil—holy anointing oil.
“What does
holy
mean, Father?”
“Consecrated to God. Set apart—like our people. Like our prophets and our Torah. Moses’ face shone with holy anointing when he came down from the mountain with the tablets. It is the residue of the Presence of the Living One,” he nodded at me, his eyes shining. “Words of life from the very mouth of God. Eventually the whole world will know. Just wait and see. Even the Gentiles will forget their idols and turn to the Lord.”
“But Father, Gentiles?” I asked, incredulous. I knew they bowed down to ridiculous stone and wood carvings. As if a block of wood could answer their prayers! I had heard how Gentiles practiced the most horrible things and taught their children to do the same. I scowled at the thought. But I also knew that Gentile practices were making their way inch by nefarious inch into our own culture and religion. King Ahab was not the first ruler of our people to worship idols made by hands.
In fact, a succession of bad kings had ruled over our people from the days of King Jeroboam until now. It seemed impossible to imagine that with each new king Israel could degenerate spiritually one more handbreadth— but it did! Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri and now Ahab. None of them righteous men like my father. Their names were like a poisoned nursery song. Baasha assassinated Nadab in order to be king, and that fate fell on his son Elah, who was assassinated. Dust to dust. Sow to the wind and reap the whirlwind, Father said. Zimri committed suicide, something absolutely forbidden for Jews to do. He burned himself inside his own palace so neither he nor his belongings would end up in the hands of his enemies. After him came Omri the divider when brother fought brother, the most shameful kind of war.
As the prophets foretold, that was the beginning of the end of the Glorious Land. It would be several thousand years later and take many thousands of entreaties to redeem God’s people from their folly, but He would make good on His promise to plant them again in their land never to be uprooted. When that happened, Father said that it would astound and confound the wise men of the world. And it would happen in a single day.
“One day our people will have Jehovah for their king as He intended,” Father told me. He was talking to me but seemed to be addressing the land itself as if to offer solace. “He thwarts the schemes of connivers, so that none of their plots come to fruition. He catches the proud in their conspiracies; all that intricate intrigue will be swept out with the trash!”
He poked his thumb in the direction of the palace and turned to look directly at me. “Suddenly they will be disoriented, and plunged into darkness. They will not see to put one foot in front of the other. But the downtrodden are saved by God, saved from the murderous plots, saved from the iron fist.” He paused. “And so the poor continue to hope, while injustice is bound and gagged.” He patted my hand on his arm. “It won’t last forever. Moses is our prophet, and when he laid his hands on Joshua that holy oil began to flow. It continues to this day.”
It seemed a hush fell over our garden in the afternoon sun as though the trees and the birds and the earth and sky were all listening to his words.
“Here.” Father reached up one of his thick fingers and pointed. “You see these round buds here?”
I nodded and looked intently at the small clusters of berries beneath thick leaves.
“Each of them an olive in a few months time, God willing!” he said. “And you must help me keep an eye out that the birds don’t come and try to steal our harvest when it comes near time for picking.”
“They often build their nests in these branches, Father,” I said. “I’ve seen them. And the doves make their way here to get out of the afternoon heat. I hear their cooing to one another.”
“Conspiring!” Father said. “They are talking to one another in their secret dove language. And with one red eye they are keeping watch on you. ‘The little girl comes!’ they are telling each other. ‘Be careful not to look suspicious or she will run to tell her father that we are spying out the fruit of this olive tree for ourselves!’”
I was giggling by now, not fully aware in the joy of my father’s presence of what was being instilled in my heart. Day by day my sense of who I was, my identity, was being poured into my very soul—just as the oil from these olives would soon flow into its appointed vessels under my father’s watchful care. This knowledge of my identity as a child of the true King was providing the strength I would need one future day in order to rise up and overtake my enemy.
And We Listen . . .
Scripture tells us nothing of the early years of the Shunammite; this scene is one we might imagine from her young life. The influences of the Israelite faith in Jehovah would have laid the foundation for her faith in action. The Bible calls the Shunammite “great” (see 2 Kings 4:8, KJV). And we can assume she is one of the heroes in the faith hall of fame in Hebrews chapter 11 because she is one of the women of Israel who received her dead back to life. This was just one of the miracles in her life. What made her “great”? Why did God come to her and fulfill her deepest longings? Because she made room for the anointing. She welcomed His Presence to come and abide.
A lot of modern books talk about greatness, but greatness that matters is greatness in the eyes of God. All else, as the Bible says, is dust and dung. King David worshiped the Lord, saying, “Your gentleness has made me great” (Psalm 18:35, NKJV). The grandeur of God is the majestic simplicity of His grace, His condescension—His “gentleness,” as David said. It reveals the nature of God as utterly humble and as one who comes down to intervene when we invite Him into our world. The cross of Christ is the ultimate demonstration of this greatness. And in our world God is looking to make His habitation in a heart that is fit for His Presence.