Today in church we read the story of Naaman the leper from 2 Kings Chapter 5. He grumbled because he went all the way to Israel from Syria to be healed and Elisha told him to go bathe in the River Jordan. Now, most sermons I have heard over my life are on how we are not to grumble like Naaman but trust and obey. But today, my heart jumped as my eyes landed on verses 2-5.
Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “Would that my lord were with the prophet in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” So Naaman went in and told his lord, “Thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel.” And the king of Syria said, “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.”
Do you catch it? A little girl had been kidnapped, snatched from her homeland and family, yanked from her religion, and enslaved. Was she bitter? No. Did she grumble? No. Instead, she had pity on her new master’s ailment which, in her religion, would have ostracized him from society. She told his wife a prophet in Samaria could heal him. This was before Samaria and Israel split and harbored bitterness with each other.
And guess what? The wife listened and she told her husband, who also listened and went to the king to ask for permission to go to Samaria…all on the testimony of a foreigner, who was the lowest of the low…a child and a girl.
Photo by Omar Elsharawy on Unsplash
What faith she must have had. What courage. She could have been flogged for speaking up. OR laughed at and shoved into the pig sty. Surely God’s Spirit strengthened and encouraged her to make this bold move.
And the result? Naaman eventually obeyed Elisha and washed in the Jordan. He was healed and acknowledged God as Almighty and the One and Only worthy of worship. A very influential man, a commander of the whole army of Syria, was converted. He returned to Syria with healthy skin and no sign of having, what in that day and age, would be considered an incurable disease. I can only imagine the stir this miracle caused.
Reading those three verses humbled me.
How about you? The next time you feel a bit uneasy when the Holy Spirit nudges you to speak to someone remember this nameless little girl. She obediently spoke up (to the ones who had enslaved her and snatched her from her family no less) and let God handle the rest. Her faithfulness cascaded in ways she could not have imagined, all the way down through the centuries to someone like me.
So can your faithfulness. So can mine.
Lord, help me put aside my feelings of inadequacy and boldly proclaim what your Holy Spirit prompts my heart to send to my tongue. I pray this through Jesus, my Savior, my strength, and my Redeemer. Amen.
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