There isn’t a boring page in the Bible. And surely miracles like this are nothing to sneeze at!
Great women of God are up to great tasks. The Shunammite’s son has died in her arms. “And she went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, shut the door upon him, and went out” (2 Ki 4:21). She then requested from her husband a driver and some rapid transport. Her husband seemed to be unaware of the situation. He hadn’t come to the house with his sick boy. Now he wondered why his wife was in a hurry to see Elisha. Her response seems to dismiss him. “It is well,” she said (v 23). “Then she saddled a donkey, and said to her servant, ‘Drive, and go forward; do not slacken the pace for me unless I tell you’” (v 24). As the old timers used to say, “Don’t spare the horses!” Across the Jezreel Valley they rode, heading to the man of God who was at Mount Carmel. Elisha saw her at a distance and sent Gehazi his servant to intercept her. But she kept coming until she clung to the prophet’s feet. When Gehazi tried to push her away, Elisha rebuked him: “Let her alone; for her soul is in deep distress” (v 27). The woman reminded Elisha of their conversation before the boy was conceived. “Did I ask a son of my lord? Did I not say, ‘Do not deceive me’?” (v 28). In other words, This was your idea; what are you going to do to make good on the promise? Notice the strange first attempt—Gehazi putting the staff on the boy. There are two ways to attempt accomplishing anything. One, pictured by the staff, is by wielding authority. It didn’t work. The other is by laying down one’s life, which Elisha did in symbol. “Then the child sneezed seven times” (v 35). A sneeze is not air breathed in but expelled out. This wasn’t artificial respiration but supernatural expiration, life from the inside out. Only God can turn death into life!