LENT 2020: Day 29

• Lent 2020: Day 29 Monday, March 30, 2020:
  Psalm 143; 1 Kings 17:17-24; Acts 20:7-12

“The good news of the Bible,” writes Richard Nelson, “is that God offers life in the midst of death.”

We live in the midst of death. More so today than ever before.

But the good news is that God offers life.

And today’s story of Elijah offers a glimpse of the possibility of human agency in bringing life.

Today’s reading is the third of three episodes in the chapter, over which Nelson says that “Elijah moves from passive to active.” 

The key point in our reading: “the LORD listens to him.” 

Not only that, but Elijah even calls God to account:
    LORD my God, have you actually done harm to the widow
    with whom I sojourn to put her son to death?

And then Elijah “stretched out over the child three times and called out to the LORD and said,
    LORD my God, let the life-breath, pray, of the child go back
    into him.

The narrator tells us what happens next: “And the LORD heeded Elijah’s voice, and the child’s life-breath went back into him, and he revived.”

The LORD heeded Elijah’s voice.

Incredible.

Our reading has no interest in explaining death. Why it happens and what God’s role is — that we don’t know.

All we know is that death happens.

And what the story tells us is that we have a role in bringing life in the midst of death.