and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house.
LORD Jesus, we seek healing today. Help us to come before you without our horses and chariots. Help us to lower our defenses. Help us to lay down our prideful pretense. You want to heal us. But at the same time and even more importantly you want to reveal yourself to us.
Let him come to me and find out
that there is a prophet in Israel.
If our defenses are up and we are too busy trying to impress we will not be open to encounter you. We have all of these preconceived notions that you need to strip from us. We have ideas about the way you work which prevent us from actually seeing you.
I thought that he would surely come out and stand there
to invoke the LORD his God,
and would move his hand over the spot,
and thus cure the leprosy.
We have these ideas about who you are. We say, in some sense, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?" (cf. Joh. 6:42). Are you not the Jesus with whom we are familiar. Are you not the one we think we know and understand already? You are that, but you are much more. You want to truly connect with us and encounter us. You want us to see, not just our old ideas about you, but your very self. You want to show us your heart, filled with love for us.
Jesus, you might be calling us to find healing in a place we do not expect. You may be calling us to go and wash seven times in the unimpressive Jordan. You promise that our flesh will heal and we will be clean. But we are hoping for more drama, more beauty, and more exultation. After all, we set out with horses and chariots. Our pride has a hard time coming back to the ordinary to find you. We think we deserve novelty. We become fixated on this sort of thing in a way that makes you hard to see. We begin to confuse our thirst for healing and for you with a thirst for something else. We try to drink from the wells of worldly fulfillment. We even try to frame our brokenness and healing in these terms.
Help us to learn to recognize that for which we truly thirst.
Athirst is my soul for the living God.
When shall I go and behold the face of God?
Help us not to miss you in the ordinary and day to day. If you are calling us to acts which do not seem sufficiently grand to matter let us lay aside our preconceived ideas.
But his servants came up and reasoned with him.
“My father,” they said,
“if the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary,
would you not have done it?
All the more now, since he said to you,
‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.”
If we can just lay aside our ideas and let you work the way that you want to work we encounter something greater and more grand than any healing narratives we imagine for ourselves. We encounter you and all of the joy that you bring.
Send forth your light and your fidelity;
they shall lead me on
And bring me to your holy mountain,
to your dwelling-place.
Then will I go in to the altar of God,
the God of my gladness and joy;
Then will I give you thanks upon the harp,
O God, my God!
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