Article June 26, 1948 Issue

"IT IS WELL"

RUTH M. SILVER

What an interesting and enlightening anthology might be compiled from the hearts of human mothers who have turned to God in times of trial in the upbringing of their children! In the proportion that faith in and understanding of God as the only Parent have supplanted their merely human love, have they received the answers to their prayers.

One of the most beautiful and poignant examples of a mother's supreme faith in the power of God is the story of the Shunammite woman recorded in the fourth chapter of II Kings. Her only child had been born as a child of promise, and we may well imagine the love she must have bestowed upon him who was the answer to her great desire. We may also understand something of the temptation to grieve when the child was stricken and died (II Kings 4:20).

But did she let a mother's sense of personal loss govern her feelings and actions? The Bible account tells us that her thoughts turned immediately to the prophet Elisha, whose word had foretold the child's birth, and for whose convenience she had furnished a room in her home. She knew that Elisha's faith was available in the child's extremity, so "she went up, and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and shut the door upon him, and went out." She did not even tell her husband what had happened, saying merely that she would go to Elisha, who was at Mount Carmel. When her husband questioned her as to the purpose of her visit, she replied, "It shall be well." Not for one moment did she admit the reality of the sense testimony concerning her son or honor the false picture in thought or word.

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