God's use of tragedies
1 Kings 17:17-24 Some time later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. (18) She said to Elijah, "What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?" (19) Give me your son, Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. (20) Then he cried out to the LORD, "O LORD my God, have you brought tragedy also upon this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?" (21) Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried to the LORD, "O LORD my God, let this boy's life return to him!" (22) The LORD heard Elijah's cry, and the boy's life returned to him, and he lived. (23) Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, "Look, your son is alive!" (24) 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."
Here you have a very different scene to the one that we have just been examining previously. You have Elijah, this woman and her son in a time of famine who are actually doing okay. The house is pleasant. Every time they go to get a meal they can dip their hand in the barrel and there is something there. It doesn't say how long this goes on for but at some point the scene changes and sickness enters into the house. The name of this place means 'smelting furnace'. This woman is now going to undergo some sort of heat or trial or pressure upon her, because not only has she lost her husband but now she is also going to lose her son. In verse 18 she says to Elijah 'what do I have to do with you, O man of God? Have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to kill my son?' In other words what she is saying is this - 'if you were not here Elijah, none of this would have happened.' She is blaming Elijah and indirectly she is blaming God but more than that she is saying 'it is my fault'. It is my sin that has been brought to remembrance and it is my sin that has caused my son to die. When I read this it occurred to me that this is an interesting thought because when was the last time that tragedy or something that was really wrong came into your, or your family's, life? How often do you look at it and think 'is this judgement from God, is this something that I have done that has brought this to pass? Is it because of my sin that this has happened? Do you actually think that? When things go wrong do you look at your own life and think this could be because of your own sin. Is this true? Sometimes it could be because of judgements or consequences of sin. There is also discipline of the Father, but not all the time. Just because something goes wrong, it doesn't mean that it is something you have done. Do you recall that when Jesus came across a man that had been born blind, and His disciples came to him and said 'why is this man born blind, is it his own sin or that of his parents'? Jesus said 'neither' because sin in this instance is not the issue but that the Glory of God may be shown in this man's healing. However, in some cases there are consequences to the wrong that we do or God can discipline us. But it is not all the time because tragedy and sickness and difficulties happen to the righteous and the unrighteous - it happens to all. So the first response of this woman was 'is this because of me?' It doesn't say what that sin is that had been brought to her remembrance. But she was thinking it must be something I have done that has caused this. It is because of me!
Pondering upon this, the thought came to me that when they were in the house and had abundance and everything was going well for them, there was no real acknowledgment of sin in their lives. Sometimes it takes a tragedy, a sickness, a trial or something to go wrong to bring out the state of our hearts. Occasionally this is hidden from us, so sometimes when things go wrong we can actually start to examine our own heart and life and see that things are not as clean as we may have thought. However, when everything is going fine, most of the time we are not conscious of the wrongs that are within, but a little bit of pressure and a little bit of hardship that comes our way sometimes awakens our consciousness and we can see that things are not good. This seems to be the case with this woman. So God actually uses all these tragedies and all of these situations to awaken things that are hidden.