It's The Little Things

Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1-14

Theme: Little Things can be Big Things

How God can use the little things, the ordinary things in our lives to bring about miracles all around us.

INTRO:

Grace and peace this morning from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!

I want to talk to you today about the importance of little things.

Little things that may not seem like much at first but as time goes on, they can grow in importance. That is the way it was for a few things in our story this morning and in American History as well.

Some days ago, I came across a little story that I found fascinating. It involved a 16-year-old and his kite. It involved not only his skill in flying his kite but where he flew his kite.

The year was 1848 and both the United States and Canada wanted to find a more efficient way to cross the Niagara Falls Gorge which was 800 feet across some white-water rapids. The idea was to build a suspension bridge. However, no one knew how to start the bridge. There had to be some way to connect the two banks of the Niagara Falls Gorge together.

Theodore Hulett suggested the idea of flying a kite across the bridge. You could then use the kite string to begin stringing across a connection. He offered a cash prize of $10.00 to the first person who could successfully land their kite from one side of the gorge to the other side of the gorge.

The winner of that $10.00 was then 16 year old Homan Walsh. He successfully flew his kite over the 800 feet and his kite string was grabbed on the US side. They then attached a small rope and pulled it over, then a heavier rope and finally they attached a wire cable. The first step of building a suspension bridge was started. In a few years that first bridge was replaced with a more stable bride and today there are several bridges that span the distance enabling people from the United States and Canada to visit one another, to do business with one another and to enjoy both sides of the Niagara Falls.

Who would have thought that a bridge could be started with something as simple and as little as a piece of string and a kite?

In our story this morning, we find one of the most amazing miracle stories in the Old Testament. It is the story of the healing of the Syrian commander Naaman. He was famous for his courage, his fearlessness, and his skill. However, he also becoming famous for having contracted of the most dreaded and misunderstood diseases at the time – leprosy.

If his leprosy could not be arrested or cured, then Naaman’s future as a military commander would soon be finished. Leprosy, the skin disease that Naaman possessed had the potential to cause permanent physical impairments and damage to a person’s nerves, skin, eyes, and limbs. His form of leprosy, unchecked could also lead to extreme emotional and mental problems.

At the time, it was widely believed that leprosy was highly infectious. People who contracted leprosy were quickly quarantined and no longer permitted to be a part of greater society.

They would have to take special care where they would live, where they would eat and where they would work. The mere mention of a person having leprosy usually caused one to lose their employment, their home and eventually all their friends.

Some families would go so far as to hold a pre-funeral service and consider the person now dead. Most people who had leprosy back in Naaman’s time were forcibly relocated to leper colonies where they would be condemned to live out their days without much compassion or care. They were considered cursed by God and therefore an outcast to society.

We get the idea that Naaman had just recently been diagnosed with leprosy. At the time of our story, he was still in command and he was still a part of Syrian society at large.

But there is also the idea that his leprosy was not getting any better. That it would not be long before he would be forced to give up his military command and be forced into quarantined. From there, he would have been condemned to live the rest of his life in a leper’s colony. And that is where we find a series of little things that changed his life.

Little things that by themselves don’t seem like much but as we shall see it was little things that enabled a great miracle to happen in Naaman’s life. Little things have the potential to became the very things that can change our lives forever.

I. Little things like some words spoken by a slave girl.