Friends In Low Places Series

As fall is here, our church family is examining the life of Elisha. Elisha shows us how to remain faithful during challenging times. Our God always leaves His light for us even in the most troubling of times. Elisha’s life is the story of God’s bright light in the darkest of skies.

I invite you to turn in your Bibles to 2 Kings 5. Elisha’s life would make for a great “airport read.” When you string together all that Elisha does in his life, he’s really impressive. Elisha helps the city of Jericho by curing their water supply (2 Kings 2:19-22). He takes on some young hooligans who insult him and have no respect for God (2 Kings 2:23-24). He advises kings on how to trap rains from flash floods to provide water for their armies (2 Kings 3:14-20).

God uses him to resurrect a woman’s son and pay off the debts of a prophet’s widow (2 Kings 4).

Again, if all his stories were packed together into one book, you’d pick it up at the airport bookstore, where you’d read page after page before you even landed! Today, we will witness him insult Israel’s enemy before God uses him to miraculously heal him. Elisha delays his entrance into today’s story. And while his appearance is delayed, it’s worth the wait.

Today’s Scripture

“Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, ‘Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.’ So Naaman went in and told his lord, ‘Thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel.’ And the king of Syria said, “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.”

So he went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, ‘When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy.’ And when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, ‘Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider, and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me’” (2 Kings 5:1-7).

Ripped from the Headlines

When you consider a young girl abducted from her home, you wonder if you are reading a headline off social media today. Yes, our story could have been ripped from the headlines over the past few weeks. In recent days, a terrorist group called Hamas brutally killed more than 1,000, wounded around 2,400, and taken Israeli hostages to boot.1

Again, our story is seemingly ripped from the headlines. Today, so many hostages have been abducted. One particularly poignant story that has emerged in recent weeks is a music festival in the Israeli desert. In the midst of the music and the dancing, people noticed parachutes descending from the sky. This was followed shortly by armed men arriving in trucks. As people began to flee to their cars, Hamas shot these concert-goers point blank as they waited for them in ambush by their cars. This was the highest number of deaths among the Jewish people since the Holocaust nearly a century ago.2

And just like today, “a little girl” was abducted in our story. In fact, it is a Syrian raiding party that carries her off from her home (2 Kings 5:2). Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the hurt and helplessness her family felt? Their little girl gone, and “God, only knows what happened to her!” Now, she is gone so long that she settles into this enemy territory to make it home.

Cynthia Ann Parker

As I reflected on this story, I thought of Cynthia Ann Parker in the USA who was abducted when she was but 9 or 10 years old by the Comanche Indians. Parker would go on to marry a Comanche chief and have three children with him before she was rescued by the Texas Rangers.3 But she was not happily rescued – not at all. She wanted to remain among the Comanche Indian people she told the Rangers. She was forced to live among white people at her uncle’s farm here in Birdville, present-day Haltom City.