I once asked Ruth Bell Graham for her favorite Bible verse. She laughed, “It keeps changing!” Then she wrote, “Proverbs 8:19-31” and signed it for me. It hangs on my wall, alongside the signature of her husband who had written “Billy Graham” under “Psalm 16:11.”

I sympathize with Mrs. Graham. The Bible is so rich, so teeming with great stories (think of the sagas of Joseph in Genesis and David in I and II Samuel) and tiny insights (like Matthew 13:52 and Psalm 18:35), that we keep making these discoveries of people and lessons and stories we overlooked the previous times we’ve made this journey through God’s Word.

Take the story in II Kings 8:1-6. I have no idea how many times I’ve read the Bible through or the number of times I’ve studied and taught this portion of Israel’s history. But one day last week, this little event rose up and slapped me in the face; I’ve not been able to get it out of my mind since.

That, incidentally, is one way the Holy Spirit calls my attention to a wonderful truth: the story or scripture or quotation will not go away. (Like the Sonny and Cher song “I’ve Got You, Babe” in the movie “Groundhog Day,” it keeps coming back. Okay, bad illustration!)

The Lord is sending us a message.

The king of Israel (that would be the Northern Kingdom, not Judah) has Gehazi, the veteran servant of the Prophet Elisha, regaling him with stories of Elisha’s past. Apparently nothing much was going on in the country at the time, today’s news was slow, and the king was enjoying some down time.

Gehazi was glad to tell how God had used his master over a ministry of many years.

One of Gehazi’s best stories had to do with Elisha and a family from Shunem, the story recorded a few chapters earlier, in II Kings 4. We can just imagine Gehazi enjoying himself, waxing eloquent, delighting in the opportunity to bear witness to the king. (Bear in mind that without exception, every ruler of the Northern Kingdom of Israel did wrong in the sight of God, so this king was no paragon of spirituality and godliness.)

“Oh, you should have seen it, Sire! This woman of Shunem was something, a lady with a real spiritual quality about her. Her husband, well, he was another story. The best thing we can say about him is he married well.

“Well, from time to time, as the great prophet was traveling in that part of the north country, he passed through the Shunem area. And one day, the woman said to her husband, ‘Honey, I think this is a holy man, a prophet of the Lord God. Let’s build him a little room adjoining the house and offer him hospitality. We can furnish it and give him the key. It’ll be his very own.’

“Anyway, O King, that’s how it happened that the prophet and I began to stay there on our trips up that way and back. And so one day, Elisha asked me to call the woman to him.

“He said to her, ‘You have been so kind to us. What can I do to repay you? Do you need me to speak to the king for you? Maybe the commander of the army or someone influential?’

“The woman said, ‘I dwell among my own people.’

“Wasn’t that a great answer, O King! She did not require any outside help. She knew if she had a need, her people would be right there for her. The prophet and I were duly impressed.

“Elisha asked me to step into the next room with him and said, ‘What can we do for her?’

“Well, sir, this was my chance. I said, ‘Sir, the woman has no son, and her husband is old.’ Well, that did it.

“Elisha said, ‘Call the woman.’ She walked only to the doorway and stood. The prophet said, ‘Lady, this time next year, you will embrace your son.’ That was easily the very best news any Hebrew woman could ever receive, as you know, sir!

“The woman wasn’t buying it, though. This was too easy. You could see the fire in her eyes as she said, ‘No, no, no, my lord. Don’t toy with me. Don’t promise what you cannot give.’

“And that was all he said to her. He had made her a promise and regardless how she felt about it, it was going to happen. She waited, nothing more was said, and so she turned away slowly and left us.

“The next year, right on schedule, just as Elisha had said, she gave birth to a little boy. It was a grand occasion. Well, sir, the child grew up and became the joy of her life.

“And then one day, that little boy died. He was out in the field with his father and the hired hands one morning, and came down with a sudden headache and collapsed. They carried him back to the house. His mother cradled him in her arms for the rest of the day and along about noontime, he died.

“The heart-broken woman carried her son into the prophet’s room and laid him on the bed. She locked the door and called her husband to have one of the men saddle her an animal so she could go in search of the man of God. It was not the husband’s finest hour. He said rather clumsily, ‘Why are you going for him? It’s not a holy day.’

“The wife was in no mood for chatter. She said, ‘Well.’

“So, the woman and a servant departed in a hurry to find the prophet, somewhere around Mount Carmel.

“Well, sir, that afternoon the prophet and I were up there ministering. Suddenly, Elisha looked up and said, ‘That woman coming down the road — that’s the Shunnamite woman. Run to meet her, Gehazi. Ask her if everything is all right with her and the family.’

“As I said, O King, she was in no mood for chatter. All she said to me was, ‘Well.’ She had her eyes focused on Elisha and would talk to no one except him.

“When she arrived, she threw herself to the ground before Elisha and held onto his ankles. I tried pulling her away, but the prophet said, ‘Let her alone. Can’t you see her soul is in deep distress? And I don’t know why; the Lord hasn’t shown me what’s going on.’

“The woman said, ‘Man of God, did I ask you for a son? Didn’t I say for you not to deceive me?’

“Well, sir, with just that, Elisha knew something had happened to the child. He handed me his staff and told me to get back to Shunem as fast as I could. I wasn’t to talk to anyone along the way, not even to say ‘hello.’ And when I got there, I was to lay the staff on the face of the child.

“Now, the woman, well, she was not leaving Elisha. Maybe she thought he was sending second best when he ought to be going himself. She flat out told him, ‘I’m not leaving you.’ So, the prophet and the woman started out, while I ran on ahead.

“I really got after it. This was clearly a matter of life and death. I arrived at the house and entered that room and laid the staff on the child’s face. Nothing happened.

“I hurried back to meet Elisha and the woman. I told them, ‘It didn’t work. He’s lying there unresponsive.’

“When they arrived, the prophet entered the room and closed the door, leaving all of us outside.

“We could hear him praying inside. And then — he told me about this later — he did something really strange. The prophet stretched out on the child, his mouth and eyes and hands on the little boy. Suddenly, the flesh became warm.

“Well, sir, the prophet walked in and out of that room several times — you could tell he was stressed — and repeated that little exercise of lying down on the boy. Finally, after what seemed to us hours, we heard the most wonderful sound coming from the room — the kid sneezed! In fact, he sneezed seven times! It was great.

“Elisha stepped out of the room and said to me, ‘Call the Shunnamite woman. Tell her to come get her boy.’

“And so, O King, that’s how it happened. One of the greatest miracles ever.

Just about this time, while the king was processing this and maybe trying to decide how much of it he should take at face value, Gehazi practically exploded.

“Here she is, Sire! This is the woman — and this is her son, the ones I’ve been telling you about! They just entered the room!”

It’s what we call a “God-moment.”

What had happened is that seven years earlier, Elisha had told the Shunnamite woman that God was sending a famine upon Israel and that she should do whatever she needed to in order to take care of her household. With no mention of her husband — he’d been elderly when the child was born — we might assume he was no longer alive.

For those seven years, the woman and her son and the household had lived in the land of the Philistines, partaking of their hospitality. And now, when the famine was ending she was returning to her homestead. But since she had been absent for so long, she feared someone else had taken possession of her homestead.

That’s how she happened to show up at the palace in Samaria that day. She was planning to ask the king to see that her land and houses were restored to her. But she never got a chance.

The king — we’re never told which king this was and some authorities suspect the story is out of chronological order, so readers do well to just leave him nameless — called the Shunnamite woman over.

“I’d love to hear your story, madam,” he said.

It’s one thing to hear a story about someone, but an entirely different matter to have the one it happened to standing before you, giving a first-person recital of the events.

What a moment that must have been.

When the woman finished, the king turned to an aide and said, “See that her land and all the produce from her fields over the past seven years — everything — are restored to her!”

She didn’t even have to ask.

Nothing has power like a first-person story. “This happened to me.”

We are all Exhibit A of God’s grace. We all have our own story to tell.

The world, lying in darkness, weakness, and wrongness, waits to hear our story of the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, go ahead. Tell it. “This is what I know of the Lord.”

Ken Chafin used to say, “The person with a testimony is never at the mercy of a person with an argument.”

“We’ve a story to tell to the nations.”