The mother in this story is a Shunammite, which, let’s be honest, sounds less like a nationality and more like something a dentist finds and wants to schedule a follow-up about.
She saddled her donkey. She told her servant, “Lead on. And unless I tell you, don’t slow down on account of me.”
Exceptional Haste Trims Waists
It also implies that somewhere ahead of her was a man on a mission who was about to have the worst afternoon of his career, and didn’t know it.
When the Pirate Preacher spied the pair nearing the wharf where his ship was docked, he ordered his bosun’s mate, Tobias Grub, to run and meet them and see if everything was okay. The Pirate Preacher had a history with this woman. History, in that she’d built him a room on her roof (so he might sleep as if napping on the deck of his ship), fed him his suppers, and never once asked for anything in return, which — if you know anything about how debts of gratitude work on a pirate ship — means she owned him.
When Grub reached the pair, he asked the mother if she was okay. The mother replied, “I’m fine.”
“Really, I’m fine.”
This was and is code that Grub and most pirates and men still do not get.
By fine, he thought: Good, I’ll go back to the ship. But then he caught something in her expression. A glower in her eyes that said: Everything is not fine, you idiot. I am on a slow donkey riding into a port town rife with murderous, lying thieves. What respectable woman would do that?
Grub, thinking he might pop into a bookstore and buy a dictionary so he could look up the definition of “fine,” guided the mother and her servant to the ship.
Ankle Bracelets
The Pirate Preacher, seeing his ankles shackled by a pair of hands, now feared there was a good chance he would miss his afternoon nap if he did not act quickly. Being a guy pirate, he immediately sought to understand the mysterious reason the woman came and sensed this was an emotional issue, and started using some words to describe the woman that are not often thought of — by women — as complimentary. Words that, if said out loud, might invite a slap.
He simply received the stink eye, and she began a running commentary on her emotional state that started with, “Did I ask you for help? Did I?” Then, before he could react, she continued with, “No, I did not. And now look. My son, the one you declared the Lord would give me, is dead. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
The Pirate Preacher shrugged — always a guy’s go-to move — and gave instructions to his bosun mate that included tucking of cloaks, a belt, the preacher’s walking stick, and his staff to run — not ride a horse — to help the woman. He also ordered the bosun mate to present himself as a man on an important mission: as if anyone might care.
Power of a Walking Stick
“Lay my walking stick on the boy’s face.”
Gulp! “What?” asked the mate. “Club the boy in the face?”
“Did I say ‘club’? Did you hear those words come out of my mouth? I said, lay my walking stick on his face.”
Stunned, the bosun’s mate looked at the mother’s servant, then the mother, then up the long, winding path that led over the mountains to where the woman lived. Though unsaid, we can guess he was thinking: How come they get to ride donkeys, and I have to run? Somewhere in the long and storied history of men being given the worst end of an errand, this moment ranks near the top.
A Man Scratching His Head Is NOT Psoriasis
“As surely as the Lord your God lives and as you live, I will not leave this place.”
What followed was an awkward moment with all three men scratching their heads, each secretly wishing there was a course somewhere on how to understand and please women — ideally a short course, offered at the wharf, that could be completed with real women aboard, dressed as wenches, and acting out key communication clues in ways that brought hoots and howls from the crew.
The Pirate Preacher, recognizing he was going to miss his nap and perhaps dinner if he did not act quickly, gave his bosun’s mate the walking stick and limped along up the path with the mother, no doubt enduring many more comments that left him confused but also glad he had never married.
In the village where the mother lived, the bosun mate arrived and did as ordered. Taking care not to give the appearance of striking the lad, he carefully laid the walking stick on the dead boy’s face. He did not wish to be charged with desecrating a body, or worse, accused of using poor walking stick-handling technique in front of a corpse.
The boy did not move, breathe, or come alive.
This shocked the bosun’s mate, for to this point, every time the Pirate Preacher had declared a word, it came to pass. In fact, it was because the Pirate Preacher had declared the woman would have a son that she became a mother in the first place. For the bosun’s mate, this was new and confusing theological territory — the sort of thing that makes a man reconsider his entire career choice. Though honestly, any man who thinks becoming a pirate is a sound career decision is probably not going to find a better job offer than working as an assistant to a clergy pirate.
Outside the village, the bosun’s mate met the Pirate Preacher. “Didn’t work, boss. The boy’s still dead.”
The Pirate Preacher sighed. “Not surprised. She had not expected the touching of my walking stick to his face to bring him back to life.”
“Boss, I confess, I thought it a bit odd, me self.”
“As she thought in her heart, so it is.”
“Then why command me to try?”
“Because that was the word I declared. Her lack of faith does not undo the Lord’s word entrusted to me.”
Some Days You Nap
Aye is something pirates will utter sometimes when they don’t know what to say. Like, if the outcome could go either way, to appear in agreement or not, a pirate will say, “Aye.” Like that.
“But her lack of faith does counter God’s power,” the Pirate Preacher continued. “Come. I will show you what I must do next.”
The Pirate Preacher then explained that unless he acted in a manner the woman expected, the healing would not come to the boy.
“I feel a nap coming on,” the Pirate Preacher said to the woman. “Since my room is made ready on the roof and the boy is on my bed, I’ll nap there.”
A man of lesser resolve might have found a corpse in his bed to be an obstacle to a good nap. But the Pirate Preacher, recognizing that there are times when sleeping on a ship is impossible and a nap in the afternoon is always welcomed, only saw it as a scheduling inconvenience.
Some Days You Stay Dead to the World
After some scrunching and shoving and snuggling with the corpse — along with a good deal of praying — the boy’s body grew warm. Sensing his nap would be delayed further if he didn’t hurry the process along, the Pirate Preacher got up, paced the room, then got back in the bed and stretched out once more.
Just as he was about to doze off, the boy sneezed seven times — a clear indication that something important was happening.
Tired, cranky, and not really caring to learn what that important moment might mean, the Pirate Preacher said nothing. He only looked at the boy who had interrupted his nap, with the particular expression of a man who has been woken one too many times by circumstances entirely outside his control.
That’s when the boy opened his eyes.
The Pirate Preacher yelled for his bosun’s mate. “Fetch the mother.” Upon arriving, he added, “Take your son. Maybe give him something to eat. As for me, I’m going to nap before I head back to my ship.”
But it was not to be. The mother fell at his feet, bowed to the ground, and would have clasped his feet had the Pirate Preacher not bolted from the bed with a speed that suggested his ankles remembered exactly what happened the last time this woman got hold of them.
Outside, starting back to his ship, he said to his bosun’s mate, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue. As you have believed, so it will be. This is why some are healed, and some are not. This is why some are raised from the dead, and some are not. This is why some days we nap… and some days we do not.”
Aye. That’s the long and short of belief and doubt, mates.
In the words of that famous pirate, Mick Stagger, “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you see.”
A fictional rendering of 2 Kings 4:25-35.