The Daily Guide. grow. pray. study. The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, United States for Tuesday, 2 August 2016 - "An invitation from a captured slave girl"
Daily Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1 Na‘aman, commander of the king of Aram’s army, was highly respected and esteemed by his master; because through him Adonai had brought victory to Aram. But although he was a brave warrior, he also suffered from tzara‘at. 2 Now on one of their raids into Isra’el’s territory, Aram carried away captive a little girl, who became a servant for Na‘aman’s wife. 3 She said to her mistress, “I wish my lord could go to the prophet in Shomron! He could heal his tzara‘at.” 4 Na‘aman went in and told his lord, “The girl from the land of Isra’el said such-and-such.” 5 The king of Aram said, “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Isra’el.”
He set out, taking with him 660 pounds of silver, 6,000 pieces of gold and ten changes of clothes. 6 He brought the king of Isra’el the letter, which said, “When this letter reaches you, you will see that I have sent my servant Na‘aman to you, so that you can heal his tzara‘at.” 7 When the king of Isra’el finished reading the letter, he tore his clothes. “Am I God, able to kill and make alive,” he asked, “so that he sends me a man to heal of tzara‘at? You can see that he is only seeking an excuse to quarrel with me.” 8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Isra’el had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king: “Why did you tear your clothes? Just have him come to me, and he will know that there is a prophet in Isra’el.”
Reflection Questions:A Syrian general named Naaman had a feared, seemingly hopeless skin disease. One sign of how seriously he took the disease was that the haughty general was willing to accept a suggestion from a captured Israelite slave girl. A nearly comic string of faulty notions followed. Naaman went to Israel’s king, not the prophet (verses 5-6). That king seemed unaware of the prophet’s presence in his land, and thought the Syrians were looking for a pretext for war.
- One of the Bible’s unsung heroes is the unnamed Israelite girl in this story. She had been dragged from her home by raiding soldiers, and taken to a foreign land, but she still wished good for Naaman and pointed him to the source of help. When has someone wished good for you and pointed you to a source of help? When have you been able to do that for someone else?
- If you were in the shoes of Naaman, the powerful Syrian general, how likely would you be to listen to an idea from a foreign slave girl? Are there people in your life, perhaps even neighbors, whose ideas you discount without even seriously considering them? Might God ever try to reach you through one of those unlikely people?
Loving God, I want to become more and more like the amazing girl in this story. Help me to desire your good for all the people I deal with, and to know how to point them to you. Amen.
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Insights from Brandon Gregory
Brandon Gregory is a volunteer for the worship and missions teams at Church of the Resurrection. He helps lead worship at the Vibe, West, and Downtown services, and is involved with the Malawi missions team at home.A few years ago, I was alone in my house–my wife was out running an errand and my son Isaac was out in the cul-de-sac playing with one of his friends–when the doorbell rang. I answered to find two of the much younger neighborhood boys at my door with stern expressions on their faces.
“Hey, guys, what’s up?” I asked.
“Isaac said something mean to us,” one of the boys said.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He said he hated us and wanted us to go away.”
I paused and thought for a moment. I’m not that parent who thinks that my kid never does anything wrong, but I knew Isaac would have a reason for saying that.
“What were you doing to him when he said that?” I asked the two kids.
“Uh…” the kids froze, then looked at the ground and fidgeted around. After a few seconds, one of them snapped his head up and reasserted, “Isaac said something mean to us!”
I went over to get Isaac, who was playing with his friend who was around his age, and asked him to come home. I then calmly asked him what happened. It turns out the two younger kids had been harassing my son and his friend, demanding that they stop what they were doing and pay attention to them. This went on even when my son tried to remove himself from the situation and close a garage door, when the two kids repeatedly blocked the garage door from closing and threatened to tell his parents that he was doing mean things to them. They kept this up until my son eventually snapped at them, and then they came running to me.
Rather than talk about the issues they were having, the two kids tried to use authority (or misuse authority) to get their way. When you want something but it’s not readily given to you, using authority to achieve your goal may be much easier than talking things through and winning people over, coming to a mutually beneficial agreement. In this story, it’s very easy to see that this isn’t the way we should go about things.
But I work in one of the largest ad agencies in Kansas City and I worked in one of the other largest ad agencies in Kansas City for eight years, and I can tell you that adults do this all of the time. There’s a term for this: office politics. Ask people to tell you three things they hate about work, and I guarantee you that over half of them will list office politics. But when faced with the choice of resolving a situation with diplomacy and getting your way with authority, I think we all find it a little tempting at times.
In today’s passage (2 Kings 5:1-8), we have a man, Namaan, whose life revolves around authority. As a general, he commanded authority. As a servant to the king, and as a younger soldier working his way up through the ranks, he was subject to authority. In both roles, he experienced firsthand how effective authority was at accomplishing tasks. So when he was presented with a lead on how to cure his skin disease, he went about achieving that in the only way he knew how: with authority. In a move not that different from situations I’ve seen play out in the office, Namaan went to his supervisor, who gathers a sizable gift together and goes to who he thinks is the prophet’s supervisor to ask him to ask the prophet to help him out. And in doing so, he almost starts an international incident.
As we find out in the end, the prophet Elisha was perfectly willing to help Namaan out with his skin disease. The bribe was unnecessary, and appealing to the authority of the king was definitely unnecessary. If Namaan had just gone to Elisha as a friend, things would have been a lot simpler. And like the story above with the neighborhood kids, it’s easy to see what the correct choice should have been. But I think that’s kind of the point.
When you need something from someone, whether at work or anywhere else, it can be tempting to view authority as the quickest way to your goal. If you can win authority on your side, the other party will have no choice but to give you what you want. Having worked in advertising for over ten years, I know that this approach is sometimes unavoidable–but it should never be the first approach. If we start looking at exchanges like that as requests between friends rather than a manipulation of systems and powers, you have a much more human interaction, which often leads to a much more meaningful relationship. And meaningful relationships are where neighboring really happens.
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