Breathe on Them, Breath of God

2 Kings 4:8-37

4:33 He went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to the Lord.

No one knows for sure why Elisha stretched his body over the dead boy's body, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands (see 4:34-35). It certainly wasn't ancient CPR! Depending upon one's sensibilities, the action can seem sweet or strange. But it was what the prophet did - after he prayed to the Lord for the boy to be raised (see verse 33). Elijah did the same thing, with the same result (see 1 Kings 17:21).

Maybe what this story of prayer and healing shows us is not so much a teaching on a particular kind of prayer, but a picture of prayer of a particular kind. Perhaps its intent is to move our compassion more than to add to our prayer repertoire. Sometimes prayer for others is a laying down of our lives for them. All intercessory prayer is an act of love, but there are times when we wrestle with God for the life of another, pouring out our hearts in tears and loud cries (see Lamentations 2:19; Hebrews 5:7). When Jesus went about healing the sick and those tormented by demons, Matthew says it was fulfillment of Isaiah 53:4. "He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases" (Matthew 8:17). A close look at Isaiah 53 shows that this bearing of pain was intimately connected with Jesus' ministry of intercession: "For He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" (Isaiah 53). In His prayers for the deliverance of others, He took their pain upon Himself. His prayers were more than mere words; they were a further incarnation of God's redeeming love.

Poet George Herbert described prayer as "God's breath in man returning to his birth." Like the story of Elisha, that line isn't about the mechanics of prayer, but the heart of prayer. When God breathed His breath into Adam, Adam became a "living being" (Genesis 2:7). When we pray to the one who gave us breath, in a sense, goes back to the one who gave it. Does something like that happen in prayer - not mechanically and literally, but spiritually? God breathes his life in us. "Come, Holy Spirit," we breathe back in the prayer of faith; and something of his breath is breathed on others. Intercessory prayer is a miraculous kind of CPR.