Meet the first one immortalized in the words, “Women received their dead raised to life again” (Heb 11:35).
Each morning at the little house in Zarephath, the flour and oil brought fresh cause for thanks to the Lord. But then one day that changed. “It happened after these things that the son of the woman who owned the house became sick. And his sickness was so serious that there was no breath left in him” (1 Ki 17:17). This brought a stab of conscience to the woman. The pagan religions around her took little thought of sin, in fact practiced sin as worship to their demonic deities. But the God introduced to her by Elijah was nothing like that. Thus her response: “What have I to do with you, O man of God? Have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to kill my son?” (v 18). She had one equation right. “Sin…brings forth death” ( Jas 1:15). But it isn’t God’s purpose to bring death; that’s sin’s consequence. Rather, He “has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim 1:10). Taking the child from her arms, Elijah carried him to his room, laid his body on the bed, stretched himself on the child three times, then earnestly prayed, “‘O Lord my God, I pray, let this child’s soul come back to him.’ Then the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came back to him, and he revived” (1 Ki 17:21-22). This was ground-breaking faith! Nothing like this had happened before. When Elijah presented the living child to his mother, she exclaimed, “Now by this I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is the truth” (v 24). Jesus recounted this story (Lk 4:25-26), showing God’s plan to reach Gentiles, too. The dear widow discovered that God is not only the Life-sustainer, providing bread to the living, but also the Life-giver, providing breath for the dead.