Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Kings 5-7.

Some of these stories contain lessons about our relationship with God which I feel led to write about today.  Each contains more lessons than what I am going to focus on, nevertheless I am going to limit myself to just a few points.  In the story of Naaman, Naaman was angry because not only did Elisha not personally come to talk to him about his illness, he told him to do something inconvenient, yet completely pedestrian.  Naaman’s servants pointed out that if Elisha had told him to complete some feat of valor in order to be healed, he would gladly have done so.  Which brings us to the lesson.  Sometimes God calls us to do things which are inconvenient and completely unnoteworthy.   We need to recognize that these things may be more important than any action we could do which might bring us glory.  There is a story about a boy who helped a neighbor boy he barely knew with his books one day in grade school, only to learn years later that the boy he helped was planning to commit suicide and chose not to because of his help.  If things had turned out slightly differently the boy who helped may have never learn the difference his actions made.  Sometimes, the inconvenient little things make a big difference.

In the story where the king of Aram sent soldiers to capture Elisha, Elisha’s servant was terrified when he got up in the morning and discovered their city surrounded by a small army.  Elisha told him not to fear because those with them were more than those against them.  Then Elisha prayed for his servant’s eyes to be opened and his servant saw a much larger host of fiery warriors defending Elisha.  In many ways this parallels God’s answer to Elijah when Elijah complained of being the only one left in Israel faithful to God.  On that occasion God told Elijah that He had reserved seven thousand who had remained faithful.  In the same way here, Elisha’s servant thought they were outnumbered by their enemies, but there were many on their own side who he did not see until Elisha had God open his eyes.  However, this contains another message as well.  In this case, the human army surrounding Elisha was not countered by a human army which had not revealed itself.  Instead, the forces of God surrounded Elisha and his servant, protecting them against those sent against them.  So, even if there are not many on our side of whom we are unaware (or if they are too far away to be of aid), still God has the ability to protect us against those who would do us harm.  Let us not fear to be faithful to God, even when we think we are outnumbered by those who wish us harm for doing so.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.