Today's Daily Lesson comes from 1 Kings chapter 5 vereses 1-13:
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. 2 Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. 3 She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” 4 So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. 5 And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.”
He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. 6 He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” 7 When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.”
8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.” 9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. 10 Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” 11 But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! 12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. 13 But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”
Humility is a hard thing to come by.
And most of us have to get really, really desperate to find it.
So here is Naaman, the foreign general with all his retinue of horses, and guards, and attendants, who is desperate enough to be healed that he's willing to go to foreign and even enemy gods, but not quite desperate enough to bow down in their muddy creek.
But then Naaman's servants reframe things for him. He said he was willing to do something big for the sake of his salvation; why not something small?
It's one thing to do something big for God; but it takes humility to do something small. But it's the small things in which our disease of hubris is cleansed. And most generals, and kings, and heads of state, and probably a lot of the rest of us don't ever quite get desperate enough to do something small for the sake of being made clean.
You have to be willing to swallow your pride in order to do that. And when Jesus commented on this story, he saw it as an indictment against Israel that its arch-enemy, foreign general could find his way to a place of humility and therefore outward cleansing of the outer disease of leprosy, while its own leader would never allow himself to do what was necessary to be cleansed from the inner disease of hubris.
NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible through this year. Tomorrow's Lesson comes from 2 Kings 9-11.
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