It was Habert Hoover who said that “wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to
do ultimately as in knowing what to do next”. By knowing what to do immediately after
her son died, the Shunammite woman demonstrated wisdom. When her only son died
she did not panic. She did not accuse God of any wrongdoing; neither did she cause a
stir in the neighborhood. She simply put the dead body in the bed of the man of God.
We commended her calm yesterday. The next thing she did was to arrange for
transportation to the man of God. Her husband did not see the sense in that, because it
was not a visiting day for Elisha. However, she prevailed.
“Should anything go wrong, we must never hesitate to take it back to Him.”
Now, what’s the wisdom in her action? She was wise enough to return to the source of
that child. To begin with, the woman had probably lost any hope of any offspring until
she met the prophet. Elisha spoke by the word of God and the child was the result. So if
any problem arose concerning the child, the appropriate thing to do was to return to the
channel through which he came. It is a law of life that the maintenance of a thing is
inseparably connected to the source of that thing. If you bought an appliance and it
developed a fault, the wise thing to do will be to take it back to the manufacturer or their
appointed representatives. The truth is this: life is created by God. Should anything go
wrong, we must never hesitate to take it back to Him.