Friday, May 22, 2020

FMF: Forward

Hope looks forward and finds peace.  Consider the woman from Shunem:
He said, “Why will you go to him today? It is neither new moon nor sabbath.”

And she said, “It will be well.” Then she saddled a donkey and said to her servant, “Drive and go forward; do not slow down the pace for me unless I tell you.” So she went and came to the man of God to Mount Carmel.

When the man of God saw her at a distance, he said to Gehazi his servant, “Behold, there is the Shunammite. Please run now to meet her and say to her, ‘Is it well with you? Is it well with your husband? Is it well with the child?’”

And she answered, “It is well.”  (2 Kings 4: 23-26, NASB)

Her hope doesn't make sense.  That is the essence of hope.

For the Shunammite woman, hope literally meant moving forward, to the prophet Elisha, for healing for her son.  She had not always had this kind of hope.  Earlier in this chapter we read that it was the prophet Elisha, through God's power, who allowed her to have a son.  Back then, she didn't have the hope inside of her to ask for what she really wanted, and she warned Elisha not to get her hopes up.  She looked back.  She saw all the years she had been unable to conceive.  She believed no child would be in her future because no child had been in her past.  When the Shunammite woman was unable to look forward, Elisha looked forward on her behalf.  He had hope for her when she was hopeless.  What a different woman than one we see here.

Her son has just died, and the Shunammite woman tells her husband that she will be going to Elisha to fix the situation.  Like the Shunammite woman years earlier, her husband can not look forward.  He looks back.  He wants to know why she would go to Elisha for healing on a day that is not traditionally a day of healing. He was stuck in the past.

And there it is: You are either stuck in the past of looking forward to the future.  Those of us who look forward, and consequently move forward, can say like the Shunammite woman, "It is well."



This post is a prompt from Five Minute Friday and was written in approximately five minutes. For more information, visit fiveminutefriday.com.

3 comments:

  1. All the things I thought before
    just faded into grey
    for I am stuck fast in the lore
    of tomorrow's yesterday,
    a time when I had expectation,
    ambition and high hope,
    but that's not now my situation,
    and I have learned to cope
    with all that must be left undone,
    but still deserves my loving hands,
    with victories that won't be won,
    with those who do not understand
    that each moment saved from black despair
    is goal, though vain, for which I care.

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  2. Beautiful! This is so true even outside of a Christian perspective. I mean, this story shows us that we ought to always have hope.

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  3. I love that... Hope looks forward and finds peace. Lovely - a fellow fmfer #10

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