“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies...”
~ Psalm 23:5a (NIV, 1984)
*****
There is a story in II Kings 4 about a wealthy woman to whom God gives a gift. But she doesn’t want it. You see, she was the kind of person that did lots of nice things for other people. But she didn’t do them to be noticed. And she definitely didn’t do them to get a gift back.
She asked her husband one day if they could build and furnish a little room on their roof for Elisha, the man of God who came by their house for a meal whenever he was in town. What a little thing, she probably thought. We have the space, and I’m sure he would so appreciate the chance to have his own place whenever he comes here. Her husband agreed. So they built the room and placed in it a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp. And the man of God loved it. He was so grateful. A place to himself, away from the hustle and bustle of the town—and reserved just for him whenever he came to visit.
And so he came often, whenever he was in town, and stayed with the woman and her husband. But one day, while he was in his little room and gazing at the kind gift he had been given, he found himself wondering, How can I give a gift to her in return?
He turned to his servant and gave him a message for the woman. “How can we bless you in return for all you’ve done for us?” the message said. “We have connections with the king, connections with the commander of the army. What can we do for you?”
But the woman didn’t need anything. She didn’t have any requests.
So the man of God wondered some more. He asked his servant, “Do you have any ideas?” The servant thought of one: “What about a son?”
A son...the man of God thought to himself. Of course! A son is an excellent idea. Her husband is old, and she has no children now. A son would mean her family line could live on, and someone would be there to take care of her if her husband passed away.
And so the man of God announced the news to the woman: “About this time next year, you will hold a son in your arms.”¹
But then he saw her look down. She bit her lip. “‘No, my lord,’ she objected. ‘Don’t mislead your servant, O man of God!’”²
But what happens when God’s prophets speak is what happened here: the word was fulfilled, and the woman gave birth to a son.
It could have been a great story just like that, and that’s probably all we’d typically want out of it. The woman gives generously to the man of God and is rewarded with a great gift in return, even though she didn’t believe at first that it would happen.
But the story doesn’t end there. Spoiler alert: The child dies.
The woman puts her son in Elisha’s room, saddles a donkey, and takes a 25-mile trip to find the man of God. And when she finds him, she says just about exactly what we would have expected her to say: “Did I ask you for a son, my lord?...Didn’t I tell you, ‘Don’t raise my hopes’?”³
In other words: What’s this about? I told you I didn’t want a gift. I told you my heart couldn’t take the disappointment. I couldn’t take another chance to be fooled. Yet you went and did it anyway, and now I’m in more grief now than I had been before your so-called “blessing.”
Have you been there before? Have you hesitated to open your hands to a gift because you didn’t think you’d be able to bear it if it turned out to be a joke? Have you opened your hands anyway to receive it, desperately hoping your doubts are amiss and it’ll turn out to really be the blessing you secretly hope for...only to find that it’s not? ...only to find that it’s a slap in the face?
The woman was broken with grief—not just because her son died but because she felt like the whole thing was a cruel mockery of her heart. She didn’t want the blessing because she guessed the blessing would prove to be a joke. And it was strangely worse to find out that she was right, that it did.
But, thankfully, that’s not the end of the story either. The man of God returned with the woman to her house, and he prayed for her son, and her son was restored to life. When the woman saw it, she fell to the ground in humble thanks. It turns out the blessing wasn’t a joke. It felt like it. But in the end, God showed her that He really did intend to bless her, to pour good into her life—real, 100% good, not some shabby, piecemeal, half-good that would more appropriately be called a curse. His heart was not to tease or to mock. His heart was to teach her—in a way she would never forget—that He was out to work for her blessing.
As I read this story, I couldn’t help but think how often in my own life I distrust the idea of blessing. Even little blessings can be suspicious: Did that compliment mean they want something from me now? Do they enjoy spending time with me because they like who I am or because they like what I can do for them? It seems almost every time a “gift” comes my way, I find myself circling around it carefully before I dare open it, listening and looking with every nerve on edge to make sure it’s really a gift and not a bomb...because too many of them have been bombs, and I’m not interested in exploding again.
This woman probably felt the same way. There’s no way of knowing what happened in her life before this encounter that caused her to distrust the idea of a gift now. But clearly something did. Clearly something in her story taught her that gifts were not always good. And she turned out to be both right and wrong: What she thought was a curse turned out to be an even bigger blessing than she expected. Not only did she have the chance to witness God’s assurance that He really did want to give her this gift, but she also was further blessed years later when news of her son’s resurrection reached the king of Israel, whose excitement at the story led to more blessing for her and her family than she ever expected (II Kgs. 8:1-6).
When I look back at my own life, I realize that even those gifts that turned out to be bombs turned out to be gifts again in the end. Yes, they exploded, and explosions hurt...but they taught me how to trust God and gave me tools to help others caught in similar situations. They helped form who I am. They humbled me. They gave me opportunities to give a sacrifice of praise in the midst of the pain. And some of them became the beginnings of a road to what I’d consider now to be some of the coolest blessings in my life.
Psalm 23 gives an image of the Lord providing a “table” right smack in the middle of enemy territory. For some reason, every time I’ve pictured this verse, I see myself seated in a dark, cave-like space with enemies all around. But then the Lord would bring in a nice wooden table and put it right in front of me. I’ve had this image in my head for years, but I didn’t realize until quite recently that every time I pictured it, the table was empty.
What was I missing? That’s not the end of the story. That table’s not empty. The psalm isn’t talking about God following some IKEA instructions and managing to set a four-legged, wooden piece of furniture between us and our enemies. That’s ridiculous.
The expression in the psalm means a feast. The table’s already there. And the Lord is preparing on it a feast that fills it. He’s loading blessings into bowls and arranging them all over so that the table itself is barely part of the picture. When God says He’s preparing a table for us in the presence of our enemies, that means we get the chance to enjoy His rich goodness even as our enemies threaten us with their spears and arrows. And that goodness is full. It’s not a joke.
Pulling all of these strings together, I have a question for you: What do you think of when you think of God’s goodness? What do you think of when you hear that He has a gift in store for your life? Do you hear it as a joke? Are you about to say no because you’re afraid of disappointment?
I’m not very good at accepting gifts. I’m not one to easily think something good might come my way without a “catch” attached to it.
But I see something in this story—and in all of Scripture, for that matter—that makes me think my suspicions are off-base. Maybe it’s time I doubt my doubts. How would life change if I decided to open my hands to God’s gifts without wondering if He was teasing me? How would life change if I decided to open my heart to God’s goodness without doubting its reality? What if I stopped imagining His table as empty?
Maybe this story—and my own story, when I let it play out—can remind my heart to sing that Danny Gokey song that describes it so well:
Have you been praying and you still have no answers?
Have you been pouring out your heart for so many years?
Have you been hoping that things would have changed by now?
Have you cried all the faith you have through so many tears?
Don’t forget the things that He has done before
And remember He can do it all once more
It’s like the brightest sunrise
Waiting on the other side of the darkest night
Don’t ever lose hope, hold on and believe
Maybe you just haven’t seen it, just haven’t seen it yet
You’re closer than you think you are
Only moments from the break of dawn
All His promises are just up ahead
Maybe you just haven’t seen it, just haven’t seen it yet⁴
God really is good. Will we give Him a chance to show us that?
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¹ II Kings 4:16a, NIV (1984).
² II Kings 4:16b, ibid.
³ II Kings 4:28, ibid.
⁴ Danny Gokey, “Haven’t Seen It Yet” (2019).
