Another Baby Powell...

Our apartment is blooming with signs of our baby-to-be-born... stroller, car seat, baby bath tub, pack n' play, baby onsies, baby socks, baby blankets... it's a joy to be surrounded by these things!

But a year ago, at exactly this time, the scene was very different.

If you peered into our lives at that time, you would have seen Jeremy and I sitting on our couch, eyes red with tears, faces crumpled in pain over the loss of our first baby, miscarried at 10 weeks.

People who haven't experienced a miscarriage (and even some that have) like to point out that "it happens all the time." Miscarriages are normal. But they are not. Death is not normal. Death is not natural. It is not part of God's original design.

But praise be to God, He has conquered death and one day, we will see our little baby alive and well in heaven.


"Women received back their dead by resurrection." Hebrews 11:35

In 2 Kings 4, Elisha prophecies that a faithful, but barren Shunammite woman will give birth to a son. And, like so many barren women in the Bible, she does. But tragedy is lurking around the corner:

When the child had grown, he went out one day to his father among the reapers. And he said to his father, "Oh my head, my head!" The father said to his servant, "Carry him to his mother." And when he had lifted him and brought him to his mother, the child sat on her lap till noon, and then he died (v. 18-20).

How sad. How unfair. It makes us beg, WHY GOD? WHY? Jeremy and I certainly did in the weeks and months following our miscarriage.

But here is where the Shunammite woman becomes a hero of faith...

Without a moment's hesitation, she puts her little boy down, gets up, and goes to find Elisha. When she finds Elisha, Elisha unknowingly asks, "Is all well with the child?" and she says, "All is well." All is shalom. 

The Shunammite woman is openly in distress (v. 27), but her first words, her first disposition, is to say "All is well" and do you remember what happens next? It is actually very amazing... Elisha goes to the child and lies down on his little dead body.

Elisha puts his hands on the boy's hands, his arms on the boy's arms, his mouth on the boy's mouth.

Elisha touches the boy's unclean, dead body and transfers life to him.

"... the flesh of the child became warm... then, the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes."

A beautiful and profound picture of Christ, Elisha becomes unclean to make the little boy alive again. Because of Christ, death has no hold on believers.

Not only will each individual believer receive eternal life in heaven, but the things and especially people we once lost to death will be restored.

"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"