Perspective: Damned Dreams that Don't Die

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Damned Dreams that Don't Die

Elisha said, "About this time next year, you will be holding a son in your arms."

But she said, "No, man of God, sir; don't lie to your servant."

2 Kings 4:16 (CEB)

There's a light and a darkened road

There's a night and a fading hope

There was a dream that once was mine

But now it seems it has passed with time

From "The Other Side" by Sirenia

Every time Elisha passed through Shunem, a certain woman in the town invited him over to her house for dinner.¹  The prophet had dined at her house so many times that she suggested to her husband that they prepare a guest room so that he would somewhere to stay as he traveled.  The next time Elisha passed through town, the woman invited him to stay in the room they had prepared for him.  As he rested, he wondered if there was anything he could do to repay the woman for her hospitality, and his assistant noticed that she and her husband had no children.

Elisha blessed the woman with the promise of a son, saying, "About this time next year, you will be holding a son in your arms."

The woman replied, "No, man of God, sir; don't lie to your servant."  I suspect that this woman had, at one time, dreamed of having a child of her own.  After years of being unable to conceive, she had apparently resigned herself to never having one.  When Elisha promised her that she would have a son, she did not believe him.  Having already grown comfortably numb to the sadness and shame of childlessness, she did want to get her hopes up and open herself up to further disappointment.

The Shunammite woman reminds me of myself.  Though the prospect of having children is nowhere on my radar at the moment, biblical stories of infertility speak to me, because there is one part of my life that has seemed utterly unfruitful.  I have a dream for my life that will likely never come true, yet the damned dream just won't stay dead.  From time to time it is revived, only to be shattered anew.  I tend to become cranky when people ask me about it.

Not long after Elisha left, the woman became pregnant, and, one year after the prophet promised she would have a son, she gave birth to a baby boy.  Her dream of having a child of her own had finally come true.

One day a few years later, the boy began complaining about a headache.  Later that day, he died on his mother's lap.

Having never had children, I do not know what the woman was feeling, but I imagine she was feeling a mixture of devastation and anger.  She was doing just fine before Elisha promised her that she would have a child.  She had already made peace with the bitter reality that she would never have a child, and, when by some act of God she finally had the child she always wanted, she had to watch him die.  Her long-dead dream was revived only to be crushed all the more cruelly.  How many times does a dream have to die before it can finally be laid to rest?

The woman laid her child's body on the bed in Elisha's guest room and then set out to visit the prophet herself.  When Elisha saw her from a distance, he sent his assistant out to meet her, but she refused to tell him anything.  When she saw the prophet, she fell to his feet and cried, "Did I ask you for a son, sir?  Didn't I say, 'Don't raise my hopes'?"  The prophet had effectively ripped open an old wound in the woman's heart and rubbed salt into it.

Elisha instructed his assistant to accompany the woman to her home and to place his staff on the child's face, but the woman refused to leave unless the prophet went with her.  Elisha agreed to go with the woman, and his assistant went ahead of them and did what he instructed, to no avail.  When Elisha arrived at the woman's house, he entered the guest room, closed the door behind him, and started praying.  He leaned over the child's body and noticed that the skin grew warm.  He paced back and forth in the room, probably praying even more fervently.  He leaned over the child's body again, and the child started sneezing.

Elisha sent for the woman and presented her child to her, alive and well.

Some dreams just won't die.  If a dream won't die, then maybe it's not quite time to give up on it.  Maybe I shouldn't give up on my hopes and dreams for my life yet.


Notes:

1. This perspective is based primarily on 2 Kings 4:8-37.  Quotations are taken from the Common English Bible.

Elisha and the Shunammite Woman was painted by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout in 1649.