Monday March 12, 2012
Monday of the Third Week of Lent
2 Kings 5:13-14
“If the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it? So wash and be clean; do as he said.” So army commander Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times at the word of the man of God. His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
Does it take extraordinary means to cleanse a man of high position? On the one hand, perhaps it’s easier for God to inhabit even bread, which doesn’t resist, than for the Holy Spirit to fill any man, who does resist. And those of us who have big egos and big responsibilities resist the most. On the other hand, we are all born naked and die the same way. As a human being, Naaman was no different from the soldier who cleaned the latrine.
Either could have become a leper and either could have been healed by the naturally supernatural that Elisha called upon that day. The differences are in ego, not in the true self made by God, preserved by God, and inhabited by God. Call that soul, perhaps? Call that eternal, beyond the ravages of time? The words get in the way of this reality: that on the deepest level we, like Jesus, are the same yesterday, today and forever.
That conclusion sounds a little sacrilegious to me at first. Those are words that describe Jesus the Christ (Hebrews 13:8) Was the writer of Hebrews also describing the reality of each of us? I wonder if it’s true.
I am amazed that what I think is logical thinking can take me places where I have not yet been, where angels fear to tread, where what seems true might actually be false or what seems false might actually be true. I trust my thinking, but not too far.
Naaman learned that the “foolishness” of God was greater than any wisdom of man. He humbled himself and accepted the healing of the waters. That is my job too.
I am both drawn and repelled by the spiritual wilderness, Lord, where I go to sit and wait for you. It’s not long before I am completely dependent on whatever you give me, show me, feed me. You compare us to the lilies of the field; let me be clothed like one of those.
http://christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1006
