I woke up earlier than I wanted to, a predictable by-product of sleeping on the floor. Our Kurdish hosts had given us their room, so I crept past the kitchen where their family was sleeping on the floor. It was 7:30 AM, and I was already sweating. The day was going to be hot. I retrieved a warm water bottle from the car and left the small compound to sit in the shade of its front wall.
I sat down, tipped the water bottle over my head, threw some rocks at a tree, and thanked God for the day while I watched a grasshopper. In the distance I could hear a car coming, and it seemed to be approaching really quickly. A small black hatchback came round the corner a little sideways and slid to a stop just short of the wall a couple of meters from where I was sitting. As I stood up, the driver’s door flew open and bounced back on its hinge as a young man tried to exit the vehicle.
“Chawani, Bashi?” I said. (How are you? You good?)
He didn’t respond as he was moving around to the rear passenger side.
”Chitke? Chiboo?” I asked. (What’s up? What happened?)
As he opened the back door, a boy, maybe in his early teens, slumped out of the car towards the ground. The young man caught him. I jumped towards the car to help. The young man still hadn’t said anything, but as he lifted the limp body from the car in a turning motion, we came face to face. His eyes were bloodshot, and his breath shuddered as he inhaled. I helped him inside the compound and then ran to get our paramedic and wake the local doctor to unlock the clinic.
Our team immediately began CPR, I fetched oxygen from another room, and the local doctor started the ambulance in preparation to transfer the boy to a hospital. Another car arrived with more family members who had seen the accident. They thronged into the clinic. Some of the men were yelling at our team, and the women crowded around the stretcher, making it difficult for the team to work. Security from the checkpoint outside entered the clinic to see what the commotion was, and they began yelling at the family who had just arrived. The team continued taking turns doing CPR, but the boy was not responding.
The ambulance had been brought to the clinic door, and we began prepping the stretcher to move when the local doctor suddenly stopped doing CPR and walked away from the table. An oxygen mask was quickly placed on the boy, and our team began checking vitals as we moved towards the ambulance. As we were doing this, the local doctor returned with a white sheet and threw it over the boy’s lower body.
The sheet was unfolded and pulled up towards the boy’s bare shoulders. Only it didn’t stop; the doctor kept pulling it up. All eyes in the clinic watched as the sheet was pulled all the way up and then over his face. As the sheet dropped and sank around the shape of the boy’s face, almost in slow motion, the room seemed to stall. Then it erupted.
The women began wailing without restraint. The men began shouting and making furious gestures with their whole bodies. They ripped the sheet from the boy’s face and demanded we do more. Security advised us to go ahead with transferring the boy to the nearest hospital to avoid escalating the situation. So the sheet was removed, oxygen was reapplied, and the boy was loaded into the ambulance and rushed to the hospital with the family in pursuit. The hospital pronounced him dead upon arrival.
I will never forget that moment the doctor covered the boy’s face as the family watched. In that moment, they didn’t just lose a son; they lost part of themselves, part of their future, and all of their hope. It was Dwight D. Eisenhower who, after the death of his son, confessed that "there's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were."
I propose to you that children are our future, both in the literal and the symbolic sense. They are a living record of the potential, the possibility, and the hope that our future holds. So the great heartbreak of parents who bury their children isn’t just that they bury a body, but that they bury the future.
In much the same way a parent might bury their child, we serve a people group that is burying their future. History has not been kind to the people we serve, and we are regularly confronted with futures that are broken, hopeless, bitter, disappointed, dead, and just waiting to be buried. We find ourselves living in the graveyard of futures asking: What is to be done with all these dead?
In 2 Kings 4, we see a similar story unfold in the collision of Elisha and the Shunammite woman. A certain Shunammite woman had shown kindness to Elisha, providing food and lodging as he passed through the region. On one occasion, Elisha had seen fit to reward this Shunamite woman and prophesied that she would bear a son, which she did. However, when the boy suddenly dies some years later, what had seemed like a blessing and a source of hope becomes regret and bitter disappointment. In great distress, the Shunamite woman seeks out Elisha, who is on the mountain, and when Elisha hears of the boy’s death, he responds immediately. Scriptures tells us:
He [Elisha] said to Gehazi [his servant], “Tie up your garment and take my staff in your hand and go. If you meet anyone, do not greet him, and if anyone greets you, do not reply. And lay my staff on the face of the child.”[1]
Elisha immediately commissions Gehazi on an urgent resurrection errand. He instructs Gehazi to carry his staff without delay and lay it on the boy’s face with great urgency. As on several other occasions in Scripture, Elisha commissions Gehazi as his representative, implying he doesn’t intend to go himself or get personally involved beyond sending his staff.
But the Shunamite woman, in her desperation, clings to Elisha. The biblical account reads:
Then the mother of the child said, “As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So he arose and followed her.[2]
Something changes in Elisha when he hears her words. The last time Elisha had heard this exact phrase was most likely when he had said it himself to his master, Elijah. On that day Elisha had received a double portion of Elijah’s anointing. To hear these exact words now repeated back to him by the mother of a dead boy seems to awaken something in him. We can speculate what Elisha thought or felt, but whatever it is, he decides to leave the mountain to confront the dead himself. The story continues:
Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the face of the child, but there was no sound or sign of life. Therefore he returned to meet him and told him, “The child has not awakened.”[3]
Scripture offers no explanation as to why Elisha tells Gehazi to take Elisha’s staff or why it should be placed on the boy’s face—except that the staff seems to be serving in the place of Elisha. So instead of a person, there is an object. Despite Gehazi’s following the instructions, neither the urgency of his task nor the authority of his commission nor his equipment nor his methodology inspires any response from the dead. At this point, we may be quick to dismiss Gehazi as a fraud, perhaps forgetting how similarly our own actions reflect his. Is it possible that our service often burns on the same fuel of self-important urgency, inherited authority, and rehearsed methodologies? These things aren’t always wrong, but in and of themselves they don’t inspire the resurrection of the dead.
So then Elisha arrives, and the Scripture says:
When Elisha came into the house, he saw the child lying dead on his bed. So he went in and shut the door behind the two of them and prayed to the Lord.[4]
This Shunamite family has generously welcomed Elisha into their life by building him a room and providing for his material needs. Now they have placed their dead son in Elisha’s bed. If you allow, I’d like to suggest that this dead child wasn’t just a lifeless body. To his mother, this child was a broken promise, a stolen future, a false hope, a great distress, and a bitter disappointment. So how should we respond when we find the dead futures of our hosts in our beds? Seeing this boy lying in his bed, Elisha closes himself in the room with the dead and begins to pray. After Elisha prays, he places himself eye to eye, mouth to mouth, hand to hand with the dead boy, lying on his bed. This act makes Elisha ceremoniously unclean, and yet warmth stirs in the dead boy. Scripture relates the moment as follows:
Then he went up and lay on the child, putting his mouth on his mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands. And as he stretched himself upon him, the flesh of the child became warm. Then he got up again and walked once back and forth in the house, and went up and stretched himself upon him. The child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.[5]
Now I don’t interpret this Scripture as a prescriptive method for raising dead children, but I do think Elisha’s dilemma is as real now to us as it was then to him. What happens when people dump their broken, hopeless, bitter, disappointing, dead things in our beds will have much to do with our willingness to go eye to eye, mouth to mouth, hand to hand with the dead.
First, we need to be willing to leave the mountain. I love the mountain, and we all need the mountain experiences. When the woman found Elisha, he was on the mountain. Nation-changing victories had been won on that mountain: the power of God had been revealed, fire had fallen, and lives had been changed. However, when the dead call for us, we must be ready to descend from the mountain to the room of the dead child. Upon hearing the call of the dead, Elisha decides to send his staff rather than go to them himself. The outcome of that choice shows that we need not assume that the things we send from the mountain will adequately stand in the place of a person. The dead do not need the symbols, sacraments, or services of the mountain pressed into their dead faces; they need resurrection.
Secondly, we need to allow the Gospel to confront the world as we embrace the dead. When Elisha closes himself in that room, we see an incarnate confrontation between the living and the dead that presses eye, mouth, and hand together. Elisha fully associates himself with the boy’s death. He looks into his dead eyes, breaths onto his dead lips, and holds his dead hands. Perhaps Elisha had preferred the staff to do this job, but it is Elisha’s living body pressed against the dead that begins to stir a warmth. While this warmth is encouraging, we must not become content with warm dead bodies. Like Elisha, we must remain in the room, and return to this embrace, placing ourselves eye to eye, mouth to mouth, and hand to hand with the dead that they also might be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
J. Bloomfield is a Gateway Leader for an FAI creative access initiative in an undisclosed location.
[1] 2 Kings 4:29
[2] 2 Kings 4:30
[3] 2 Kings 4:31
[4] 2 Kings 4:32-33
[5] 2 Kings 4:34-35
