Daily Lesson for December 30, 2015

Today's Daily Lesson comes from 1 Kings chapter 17 verses 17 through 22:

17 After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill. And his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. 18 And she said to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!” 19 And he said to her, “Give me your son.” And he took him from her arms and carried him up into the upper chamber where he lodged, and laid him on his own bed. 20 And he cried to the Lord, “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?” 21 Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord, “O Lord my God, let this child's life come into him again.” 22 And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah. And the life of the child came into him again, and he revived.

Many of you have pieced it together now that most of my Daily Lessons are from the prescribed Daily Office readings for each particular day. It's a good practice that keeps me thinking and praying with the wider church.

In today's Daily Lesson readings we are given three references to children. There is the reading I selected above with Elijah healing a woman's son, there is the story of Jesus healing the son of a Roman official in Capernaum, and there is the Apostle John's word about having "no greater joy" than for his children to walk in the truth.

I know many who read these Daily Lessons have children they worry about and even agonize over. These children do not walk in the truth. Some do not believe there is any truth -- at least not a truth worth walking in. Some are lonely; their loneliness has turned them inward where they are even more alone. The light is gone from their eyes. Like the boy in today's lesson, there is a body but no longer any spirit.

It is here that a remarkable thing happens in this story. The mother is so worried over and afraid for her child that she does what most people do: she blames. In this case she blames the preacher. In effect, she is blaming God -- though she probably hasn't given herself permission to do so. As long as there is a focal point, a person to place blame with then she remains under the delusion that though things might not be under control they are still controllable.

But here is where the remarkable thing happens. Elijah tells her to let go, and she does. The man of God tells her to give her boy to him -- in effect saying, "Give your boy up to God." -- and she does it.  She is asked to give up control, or the delusion of control and to release her boy from her clutched grasp into the provident arms of God, and she consents -- she let's go.

I have a friend who was once a terrible alcoholic. He had been not only at death's doorstep but even into it's foyer. "I didn't get better," he told me, "until my family gave me up to the LORD."

Letting go may be the hardest thing we ever do -- especially when it's letting go of a child -- but it may also be the only way we ourselves will walk in the truth of the knowledge that the life of others is never in our hands, but in the LORD's.