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Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.
The river was too puny. The country was too small. The king was being set up. Only Elisha was able to see as God sees.
Do we see as God sees?
“A thirst is my soul for the living God. When shall I go and behold the face of God?” A thirst is my soul for the living God. Or is it? We get a real encounter in this first reading of someone who had great hope and understandably so.
Naaman the leper. To be a leper was really not just a death sentence in terms of physically dying, which happened, but in many ways a death sentence socially because of the highly contagious nature of leprosy. And so it’s a little bit interesting that when Naaman is given hope, even hope that maybe he does not fully comprehend or understand, he doesn’t believe it. He looks at the puny little Jordan River and says, “We’ve got much better rivers back where I’m from.”
In fact, almost everybody in this story except for Elisha thinks only from their own perspective. The king who gets the letter says, “He’s just picking a fight with me so that he can take us over.” Naaman, of course, doesn’t believe that this is significant enough. In fact, it’s only the servant girl and those who are around Naaman that really can create some sense.
But it’s the sense of faith. It’s faith in what God can do. That’s even what Elisha says when this request comes to the king. He says, “Let the world know there’s a God here.” We have God here. Let the world know God is here.
I think this is the challenge of our age. In the Western culture, we tend to be people of action. We want to do things. But in the Eastern culture, in the Eastern church, those types of churches that have different liturgies but come from a different perspective, it’s not like the West. It isn’t that a mystery is something to be solved. It’s not that everything is driven by action.
A mystery is something to be experienced. God is someone in whose presence we place ourselves. In our lives, it may very well be that we are being presented with solutions to deeper spiritual life. But because they don’t fit the way in which we may see the world or see God’s action, then in fact, we cast them aside.
I’ll give a concrete example, not to talk about it in a political way, but just simply maybe to get us to understand that there are many ways to see the world. There’s a phrase, and I understand why people criticize it. When there is some type of significant shooting in the country, we talk about thoughts and prayers. And I know, I can understand why people may not like that phrase, because it seems to take the place of action.
But quite frankly, if it doesn’t begin with thoughts and prayers, it’s highly unlikely we’re going to get to any action. If we don’t start with an understanding of what God wants to do in the world, and we don’t begin to think about trying to find in our own way what God wants to do in the world, then what have we got? We’re spinning our wheels. We’re not successful.
This is what the season of Lent is about. It’s about helping us to turn our vision to see the world the way God sees the world. And that means placing ourselves first in the presence of God, getting to know God, worshipping God, surrendering to God, because God is God and we are not. Let us ask the Lord this day to open our eyes so that we may see God’s presence, however it comes to us, so that like Naaman, when we do what God wants us to do, we are made clean and we live forever.
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