Healing was in the simple thing

“Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.”2 Kings 5:14

Reflection

Naaman was a great man: commander of the army of Syria, valiant, respected, rich. But he had leprosy — and no power, money or position cured it. When he learned there was a prophet in Israel able to heal him, he went there with all his pomp: horses, chariots, silver, gold, a letter from the king. He expected treatment befitting his status — some grand ritual, an impressive ceremony. And what he got from the prophet Elisha was almost an insult: a simple message, delivered by a servant, telling him to dip seven times in a river, the Jordan — a muddy river, nothing special.

Naaman was furious. Two things enraged him, and both are very human. First, PRIDE: "I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the LORD his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper" (v. 11). He wanted a miracle worthy of his importance, not a banal instruction. Second, LOGIC: "are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?". From a rational standpoint, he was right — there were better rivers at home. But the healing was not in the quality of the water; it was in obedience to God’s word. And Naaman almost lost the miracle because the prescription was too humble for his size.

It was a servant, once again someone "small", who saved him with enormous wisdom: "my father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?" (v. 13). What a disconcerting truth. We are willing to do the difficult and the grand for God — the heroic sacrifice, the impressive gesture. But we stumble precisely over the simple: obeying in the small, in the everyday, in what no one sees and no one applauds. Pride prefers a great sacrifice to a small obedience.

Naaman swallowed his pride, got off his horse, entered the muddy river and dipped. Once, twice, three times... and nothing. Imagine the faith needed to continue to the seventh, when the first six showed no result at all. But it was at the seventh — in complete obedience, not halfway — that "his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child". Perhaps your blessing is waiting on the other side of a simple obedience your pride has been refusing: forgiving that person, apologizing, taking the humble first step, doing the "small thing" God has already shown you. Do not despise the simple. Often it is in the muddy Jordan, and not the impressive river, that God decided to heal you.

Bible text: King James Version (public domain).