Naaman wants it his own way

June 7, 2009

Today's Reading: 2 Kings 5-6 and 2 Corinthians 9

We have all heard that expression “beggars can’t be choosers”. In other words, if a person receives help, they cannot choose what form the help comes in.

Take Namaan, for example. This was some big shot commander in Aram, who just happened to have leprosy. Now I’m sure that having this disease was a real burden for this guy’s position, and he probably didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in a leper colony.

So along comes Elisha, who says he can cure him, but Naaman assumes that it will be done in a certain fashion. In fact, he expects Elisha to come to him. Instead, Elisha wants Naaman to come to the Jordan river. I suppose that I could get an atlas and check out how far these places are on the map, but I’m certain it was quite far. No one had any cars or phones, so it probably took months of correspondence before these two could be in the same room.

I’m not certain why Naaman didn’t see fit to visit Israel and get this healing going on. I think Naaman thought his river was better than Israel’s river. Either way, I have to admit that yeah, God could have healed Namaan from any river.

The issue is would Namaan have it if it wasn’t his way. I mean, we have all been in positions where we needed help. The other day, I had a terrible problem with my teeth, and I couldn’t stop the pain. I wanted help, and I wanted it in a particular way. Sadly, God did not answer my prayer.

I had to do some things to help make the tooth pain go away. God didn’t make it go away on my terms, which would have been right away, in some act of God. No, He decided to use people called dentists. I’m still not “out of the woods” as far as this problem is concerned, by the way.

Why is it that whenever we receive help, it is always in a form that doesn’t seem to help us? It just doesn’t seem to work that way. Do you want to know why? It is scary to be in a place where you need help. Very scary. Especially when you are a Christian, because technically, we are the ones that should be helping people.

However, we need to accept whatever help that comes from wherever. We have to be willing to be helpless, no matter how scary it is. Don’t try and make stipulations about how the help comes, just take it.