The "Shalom" of the Shunamite

[parthens]

In 2 Kings 4:18-31, the Shunamite woman’s disciplined response to a crisis is a timeless lesson on how to substitute God-Mindedness for human-mindedness. Summoning strength that only God can give, she fiercely silenced the testimony of the lying senses and claimed her child’s well-being not in the hereafter but in the here and now. When asked why she was hastening to meet with Elisha the prophet, she divulged no details except to speak a single word (the original Hebrew), “Shalom”. Peace.

Note the italics in the King James version (signifying words not found in the original text but added to the English translation): “It shall be well. “It is well.”

Nothing more than … “Shalom”? To human mind, it was a lie, a Pollyanna’s wishful thinking. But to Spirit-mind, the Shunamite’s two-syllable testimony was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“And the God of peace [the God of Shalom] shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly” (Romans 16:20). The God of our Shalom is an ever-present, omnipresent help in trouble: “He is our peace” (Eph. 2:14, emphasis added).

Insisting on “Shalom”, the Shunamite was able, with one word, to counterbalance the apparent heaviness of the crisis confronting her, overcoming all belief in its weightiness, and understanding instead its utter weightlessness and nothingness.

So today, with churches burning, edicts from governors restricting religious gatherings as monuments of spiritual leaders are toppled by enemies of civilization and mockers of God Himself, we remember the woman in the wilderness with her child, Christian Science — her decades of defying the illusory supremacy of materiality, as did the Shunamite — deflating the puffed-up significance of the “great red dragon” at her heels by magnifying the Lord, the Only-ness and Allness of the Infinite that taketh away the sins of the world.

See also “The True Meaning of Shalom”.

[Florence]

This story always moves me and often makes me think of Horatio Spafford, a God fearing businessman, who after losing his only son, losing his business during the Chicago Fire, then losing all four daughters as the ship they were sailing in to Europe sank, could pen words that now comfort people all over the world in desperate times. “It takes courage to utter Truth,” Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health, such is the courage that proves a mind, a heart, a soul, inseparable from our Mother Love. The hymn is titled “It Is Well With My Soul.” . Here is the first stanza:

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Refrain
It is well, (it is well),
With my soul, (with my soul)
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

The story can be found here

Oh may we all cultivate such great faith and trust our oneness with God to the extent that we too can declare such words when there appears to be no light in our circumstances since behind the dark clouds is ALWAYS the great Light!

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