1 Kings 17:22-24 “The Lord heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, ‘Look, your son is alive!’ Then the woman said to Elijah, ‘Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.’”

There are two resurrections in these brief sentences. There is the obvious resurrection of the boy’s body to life. Then there is the resurrection of his mother’s faith, her renewed trust in the God Elijah served, whose word Elijah spoke.

The second resurrection may well be the greater of the two. A little boy can die, and God is still the God of mercy, if only we will see what he is doing. We have had a cancer diagnosis at my house, a little boy who might not have lived so long. Before we knew which way our fight with cancer was going to go, and what the outcome of the treatments was going to be, I thought about, “How do you explain this? What would you even preach at a funeral?”

Then I stumbled upon the opening words of Isaiah chapter 57: “The righteous perish, and no one ponders it in his heart; devout men are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.” Spared from future evil, entering peace, finding rest–these are all expressions of God’s mercy, even if they are applied to a little boy who is barely ten years old.

Maybe Elijah could have preached this to the poor widow, and she would have understood. Her son was truly home, safe from sin and evil, forever kept in heaven until the day she joined him there. But that is not the path God’s mercy took that day. She had already buried one man dear to her heart. The Lord chose to give her little boy back to her in his mercy. She did not have to finish her earthly journey alone. Her faith revived. She knew God’s word was true, because that is the power of God’s mercy on human hearts.

God’s mercy is never absent in our lives. But we don’t always choose to see it. We pray little, timid prayers, not big, bold prayers like Elijah prayed, because we don’t fully grasp the extent of God’s love and grace. We sometimes fight the very circumstances the Lord is using to stretch our faith, or bring us blessing, because at the time it is hard, or it hurts.

But God is big in mercy, so he gives us more than we ask, and he does not deny us the crosses or burdens that serve our souls. The first thing we need to remember is that he is love, even in the worst of times, even in the face of death. Then we will recognize his mercy, and know its power on our hearts.