Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

A song of David for the dedication of the Temple.^[a]

A Woman in Shunem Gives Elisha a Room

⁸ One day Elisha went to Shunem, where an important woman lived. She asked Elisha to stop and eat at her house. So every time Elisha went through that place, he stopped there to eat.

⁹ The woman said to her husband, “Look, I can see that Elisha is a holy man of God. He passes by our house all the time. ¹⁰ Please, let’s make a little room on the roof^[a] for him. Let’s put a bed in this room and a table, a chair, and a lampstand. Then when he comes to our house, he can have this room for himself.”

¹¹ One day Elisha came to the woman’s house. He went to this room and rested there. ¹² Elisha said to his servant Gehazi, “Call this Shunammite woman.”

The servant called the Shunammite woman, and she stood in front of Elisha. ¹³ Elisha told his servant, “Now say to her, ‘Look, you have done your best to take care of us. What can we do for you? Do you want us to speak to the king for you, or to the captain of the army?’”

She answered, “I am fine living here among my own people.”

¹⁴ Elisha said to Gehazi, “What can we do for her?”

He answered, “I know! She does not have a son, and her husband is old.”

¹⁵ Then Elisha said, “Call her.”

So Gehazi called the woman. She came and stood at his door. ¹⁶ Elisha said, “About this time next spring, you will be holding your own baby boy in your arms.”

The woman said, “No, sir! Man of God, don’t lie to me!”

The Woman in Shunem Has a Son

¹⁷ But the woman did become pregnant and gave birth to a son that next spring, just as Elisha had said.

The War Inside Us

¹⁴ We know that the law is spiritual, but I am not. I am so human. Sin rules me as if I were its slave. ¹⁵ I don’t understand why I act the way I do. I don’t do the good I want to do, and I do the evil I hate. ¹⁶ And if I don’t want to do what I do, that means I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But I am not really the one doing the evil. It is sin living in me that does it. ¹⁸ Yes, I know that nothing good lives in me—I mean nothing good lives in the part of me that is not spiritual. I want to do what is good, but I don’t do it. ¹⁹ I don’t do the good that I want to do. I do the evil that I don’t want to do. ²⁰ So if I do what I don’t want to do, then I am not really the one doing it. It is the sin living in me that does it.

²¹ So I have learned this rule: When I want to do good, evil is there with me. ²² In my mind I am happy with God’s law. ²³ But I see another law working in my body. That law makes war against the law that my mind accepts. That other law working in my body is the law of sin, and that law makes me its prisoner. ²⁴ What a miserable person I am! Who will save me from this body that brings me death? ²⁵ I thank God for his salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So in my mind I am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful self I am a slave to the law of sin.