“Take up your son” [II Kings 4:36(RSV)]

“Take up your son”. This was the son whom God had given this woman in answer to Elisha’s prayer and yet who had died as she nursed him when he was carried home sick from the fields.
That devastating experience made her angry that the prophet had deceived her – giving her a son to take him away again. She thought she had lost him.
Yet by his return from the dead she had a double miracle – born when past child-bearing age and back from the dead.
This latest experience caused her to call upon the prophet – her way of calling upon the Lord.
It doesn’t often happen exactly this way, but the experience is the same. God appears to deny us what He promised that He might draw us to Himself, and we receive more than we ever thought possible.