Reviving the Widow's Dead Son

1 Kings 17:17-24

    17 Now 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. 18 So she said to Elijah, "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?"
    19 And he said to her, "Give me your son." So he took him out of her arms and carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his own bed. 20 Then he cried out to the LORD and said, "O LORD my God, have You also brought tragedy on the widow with whom I lodge, by killing her son?" 21 And he stretched himself out on the child three times, and cried out to the LORD and said, "O LORD my God, I pray, let this child's soul come back to him." 22 Then the LORD heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came back to him, and he revived.
    23 And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper room into the house, and gave him to his mother. And Elijah said, "See, your son lives!"
    24 Then the woman said to Elijah, "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."

The widow which God providentially brought His spokesman to stay with her in the drought and famine now found her son had become deathly ill.  Finally, the boy stopped breathing and the woman was angry at Elijah and accused him of bringing the catastrophe on her.  She forgot the extended life given them both through the LORD’s miraculous provision of flour and oil all the time since he arrived and saved them.  The prophet took her son with permission and cried out to the LORD for intervention and then prayed for life from out of death for the boy.  God answered, and the child’s life returned to him!  Then Elijah loudly told the good news to the mother and she then acknowledged that he was a man of God with the word of Him in Elijah as his servant and messenger, as an ambassador of sorts.  We who are in Christ recall this event recorded in Hebrews 11:35, and how Jesus later healed a widow’s son in Luke 7:11-15.  In Mark 5:40-41 Jesus also raised a couple’s dead daughter and there was Lazarus as a grown man as well as others.  This passage with Elijah was as a representative of the LORD God doing the healing, whereas Jesus as the Lord Himself had the power and authority over death to directly bring life from death!  We then have a certain hope and expectation in Him of resurrection from our final death in the grave to eternal, unending life where death will no longer be a sting of concern or final end anymore.  That is the hope of the gospel in the grace of God in which we stand (Romans 5:2).  We will certainly be raised and have life again when He returns.