I Will Not Leave Thee

"As the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee" (2 Kings 4:30)

Does the above scripture sound familiar? It should. It was all I could write about in my last post. But, this time, it is not Elisha talking to Elijah, but a woman talking to Elisha. (For the record, this unnamed woman added a room to her and her husband's house so that the prophet could have a place to stay every time he traveled by.) This woman's child got sick and died. She traveled all the way to mount Carmel to entreat the prophet, who recognized "her afar off" (2 Kings 4:25), they were pretty close. Now, Elisha, even more than Elijah, has many recorded miracles: from feeding thousands and multiplying food, to raising the dead. Again, this should sound familiar. These were the kinds of miracles that Jesus performed durning His mortal ministry.

Now, Elisha sends his servant to heal the dead child, and that is when this faithful mother says these words:

"As the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And he arose, and followed her." (2 Kings 4:30)

In the last post, and in this one, I've looked at Elisha as a foreshadow of the Christ. I'm going to continue that. The woman said that she would not leave Elisha. Why? Because she knew that he had the power to bring her son back from the dead. Isn't that why we follow Christ? Because we know that physically and spiritually He will bring us back from the dead to reunite with our loved ones? He has this power. So why would we ever leave Him? Why would we ever follow anyone else? I'll let you in on a little secret. When I was younger, I had a time where I felt spiritually dead. But while in that 'grave' Jesus was always there. And He lifted me back up until I was alive again. That's when I first really started to follow Christ.

And the amazing thing in this story: Elisha followed her. There's a symmetry in all things. Christ followed us to the grave, to sin and anguish. We call that the atonement, where he descended below all things, following us so "that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities" (Alma 7:12). After that, how can we not follow Him, how could we ever leave Him? He followed us into our darkest depths, that we might be able to follow Him to the heights of heaven.

"Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life" (John 6:67-68)