“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Shakespeare, Hamlet).
“Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you.” And Elisha said, “Please let there be a double portion of your spirit on me.” And he said, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it shall be so for you, but if you do not see me, it shall not be so’” (2 Kings 2:9,10).
Elisha, Elijah’s protégé, asked for a “double portion” of Elijah’s spirit—a disposition, attitude and outlook that would enable him to carry on the work of national reformation that Elijah had begun.
“You have asked a hard thing,” Elijah said, “yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it (the double portion) shall be yours.”
Suddenly, a chariot of fire and horses of fire "swung low” and swept Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind. “Elisha cried out, ‘My father! My father! (I see) the chariots and horsemen of Israel!’” (2:12).
F. B. Meyer wrote, “No mere mortal eye could have beheld that fiery cortège. To senses dulled by materialism, the space occupied by the flaming seraphim would have seemed devoid of any special interest, and bare as the rest of the surrounding scenery.”
Elisha saw “things that are not seen”—a most important perspective for us—"for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).
For this reason, we long to tell our friends and neighbors the good news of Jesus and the eternal good that he brought to earth, for we have seen a realm of reality that secular men and women do not, indeed, cannot see. (To be sure, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophies.) They see the transient good of this world and arrange their theories accordingly. We fix our eyes on the eternal good of a world that is to be.
David Roper
8.2.21
