He has gone to prepare a place for you that where He is there ye may be also.
“Unto Him who hath loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, be glory and dominion now and evermore.”
There is death in the pot.—II Kings 4:40.
In the year 895 B. C., in Syria, a certain woman resided. She was the wife of Obadiah, a devoted companion, a good, genial spirit; she was a model wife, but misfortune overtook her, and the bright days of prosperity and enjoyment passed under the dark clouds of adversity. The pleasant fragrance from the flowers faded and her husband too had passed to the bourne from whence none returns.
She is now a widow left to contend against the hard and unsympathizing world.
“Trouble like a gloomy cloud
Gathered fast and thundered loud.”
Her husband and father was God above. Her old-time friends who knew and recognized her in her prosperity, now passed her by unnoticed. Adversity makes a great change in friendship. It renders friends, strangers, and breaks asunder the dearest ties. These friends were willing to see her suffer and her children torn from her side and sold into slavery that her debts might be paid. There was no helping hand, no money to loan, no salvation from this awful condition, no one to become her surety, but above all this darkness of night and of cloud, God was dwelling, and watching. He never forsakes His own, He may seem to do so, but never, never.
God sent His servant Elisha to her and through him relieved her of all her troubles. Elisha was a mighty man of God. He had received the mantle of Elijah and was a student under him. He was full of wisdom and understanding, going about in the spirit of Jehovah serving the people, instructing them, leading them to higher life, and making them acquainted with God and His ways.
Elisha during a famine had the people to gather herbs that their hunger might be relieved. Among those herbs which were thrown into the pot, there was some poisonous herb which some one had gathered by mistake, it too was thrown in. In the boiling of these together, the poison was spread through the pot. When they began eating the vegetable soup, the poison was discovered. Elijah was informed and destroyed its bad effect.
It is well for us to note that.