Catching Fog

Naaman learns that healing doesn’t take much faith. Naaman was a general in the Syrian army. One of his servants, a girl, had been captured and enslaved from Israel. One day she told Naaman’s wife about a prophet in Israel named Elisha that she thought would be able to cure Naaman of the leprosy that he suffered with.

Naaman approached his king and asked permission to go to Israel to find this prophet. The king granted him the permission and off he went. Finally reaching the home of Elisha, Elisha didn’t even bother to come to the door. Instead, he sent a messenger telling Naaman to “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”

Angry, Naaman stormed off complaining that he expected the prophet to come out and call on the name of his God and wave his hand over the leprous spot. Besides, he knew that the rivers of his homeland were far better than the Jordan. Why couldn’t he just bathe in those if that’s all it took?

One of Naaman’s servants, however, told him “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” (2 Kings 5:13)

So, Naaman went on down to the Jordan and did what Elisha had told him to do and his leprosy was cured. From that moment on, Naaman became a worshipper of Yahweh.

Jesus pointed out that one needed faith no bigger than a mustard seed to move mountains. The quantity or even the quality of the faith seems to be unimportant. How much you think a given course of action will be successful doesn’t seem to count at all. Rather, what matters is what you put your faith in–and do you act upon it? Naaman merely went through the motions, doing what the crazy prophet told him to do. He chose to act as he was told to act. And it worked. Despite the fact that his belief mostly came after God cured him.

Whether you believe the medicine will make you better, if you believe enough to simply take it like your doctor tells you, you’ll get well. The medicine acts no matter how little you believe in it. It is putting feet to your faith that makes stuff happen. Just do it, as Nike would say. Faith is a choice; that’s all: it’s not complicated or some deep, spiritual feeling. And it comes down to this question: does God exist? Can God do what he says he’ll do? Then live accordingly. Believe what he has promised and choose to live that way.

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According to Jesus in Matthew 5:1-16, the poor in spirit are blessed. In the message that Jesus preached on a mountainside, sometimes referred to as the Sermon on the Mount, he gives a series of statements known as the beatitudes, which begins with the phrase, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3) Jesus makes use of a technique common in Hebrew literature that grows out of the parallelistic nature of Hebrew poetry, where instead of rhyming sounds, ideas are “rhymed” or repeated. The technique when it is used in narrative can be described as “newspaper style.” That is, just as a newspaper article will summarize its entire contents in the first paragraph, so in Hebrew, the first line of a narrative will often summarize what will then be expanded upon in the lines that follow. Thus, in his beatitudes, Jesus sets out to explain or define, in the lines that follow his opening statement, just who the “poor in spirit” might be, as well as giving some sense of the nature of “the kingdom of heaven.”

So who are “the poor in spirit?” The poor in spirit mourn, are meek, hunger and thirst for righteousness, are pure in heart, are peacemakers, and are persecuted. The first line, in verse 3 ends with the phrase “kingdom of heaven” and likewise, the last verse, verse 10, ends with the same phrase, tying the whole passage neatly together.

And what is the “kingdom of heaven?” The kingdom of heaven is described as a place where the poor in spirit are comforted, inherit the earth, are filled, shown mercy, see God, and are called the children of God.

On a side note, there is nowhere in the New Testament where Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven as being like the Roman Empire, or even like the Davidic kingdom. But of course that makes sense, given what Jesus says in Luke 17:20-21:

Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in within you.”

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Doing what God asks you to do may not work at first or the way you expected. When Moses reluctantly returned to Egypt, he knew what his job was supposed to be. He was supposed to go to the Pharaoh of Egypt and demand that the Israelites be permitted to go worship God for three days. In reality, he was to lead the Israelites to freedom from slavery for good and lead them back to the land from which their ancestors had left over four hundred years previously. To help him convince both the Israelites and the Pharaoh to listen, God had given him a couple of impressive signs to perform.

His confidence was shattered, however, when Pharaoh not only turned down his request, but actually made life even more difficult for the Israelites he had hoped to rescue. Angry and upset, he prayed, “O Lord, why have you brought trouble upon this people? Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble upon this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.” (Exodus 5:22-23).

In response, God reassured Moses and told him to simply be patient, it would eventually work out—after God sent ten plagues against Egypt that almost destroyed the country. The process took at least a year, maybe more. This was neither the way nor the length of time that Moses had anticipated. Doing what God wanted took a lot more time and energy than he expected. And of course, once the people were rescued, the short trip to the Promised Land ended up being a nightmare forty years in the making.

Just because the going gets harder, just because you face opposition and disappointment, just because it doesn’t work the first time or even the hundredth time, does not necessarily mean that you’re going the wrong way.

Someone once wrote that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Someone else wrote that only a fool believes that the same procedures that failed before will work if you try it again and again. There comes a time, some say, to stop beating a dead horse.

“I know this is where God wants me to be. I’m so thankful he’s given me the opportunity to be at this college.”

My fellow classmate had stood up in chapel service and voiced his enthusiasm. With high school behind him, new textbooks, new classes, new dorm room, and new friends, at eighteen the world was full of exiting possibilities and boundless hope.

Two weeks later he was in my dorm room, his face betraying his inner despair. “I always got A’s in high school. I don’t understand what happened.” He showed me his first paper, a five page effort produced for his biology class. A bright red C lit up the corner of the front page, just below his name. “I just don’t know any more if this is where God wants me to be after all.”

Frank Herbert became a very famous science fiction novelist. His best known novel, Dune, which has been made into both a major motion picture as well as a mini-series on the Science Fiction Channel, was rejected by over twenty publishers before it was finally picked up by one that normally only published manuals for repairing cars. If, after sending his book to nineteen publishers and being told “no thank you” had he decided that it simply wasn’t meant to be and he should take up ditch digging instead, both he and the world would have been worse off. Failure does not come from things not working smoothly or the way you expected. Failure comes from giving up. Winston Churchill is quoted as giving a very short commencement address once. He told the new graduates a very simple thing: “Never, never, never give up.” And then he sat back down. He knew whereof he spoke: most of his political career he was a back bencher, rising to become prime minister only after years of ridicule and having been written off at an age when most people would be long retired—and then to face a crisis of unprecedented horror such as the world, and Great Britain, had never faced before.

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Accepting God’s will does not mean no complaining. Feeling the need to complain when things don’t go as you’d like is part of being a normal human being; and it is important to be honest with God rather than to pretend. Job’s life had turned from wonderful to horrible in a matter of days. It was nothing that Job had done or not done. He was a good man. In fact, God himself said that Job was righteous and that the death of all his children, loss of wealth, and the loss of his health was “without cause.” Job’s friends were convinced that he’d committed some horrible sin and if only he’d confess, all could be well again. Job knew better and simply complained about his fate. He was willing to accept whatever came his way, commenting at one point, “the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” But that didn’t keep him from voicing how he felt about his circumstances. He didn’t try to pretend he was okay, or that he wasn’t angry. He told God that he was unhappy with him and that he thought he’d done him wrong. In the end, God agreed with him, telling Job’s “friends” that their ideas about God and what was going on were completely wrong, in contrast to Job whose words had been right. (Job 1:13-22, 9:27-10:1, 42:7-8)

Some Christians get the mistaken idea that they are supposed to be happy regardless of what happens and that it is somehow sinful to get mad at God, let alone to admit to it or to tell him so. But Job tells us that God values honesty in his relationships. After all, he knows what we’re really thinking anyway. Why pretend? Lying isn’t exactly a virtue, whether we’re doing it to ourselves or to a friend or to God.

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Renewing your strength even when you’ve got nothing left to give is hard. But God is often all about hard.

Why do you say, O Jacob,
and complain, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD;
my cause is disregarded by my God”?
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint. (Isaiah 40:27-31)

Isaiah prophesied about the coming destruction of the nations of Israel and Judah. The destruction was designed to get the Israelites to correct two long standing problems: their tendency to worship other gods, and the tendency of the rich and powerful to oppress the weak and poor. But what Isaiah had to say to them–and even the coming punishment–was not actually bad news.

Consider what the author of Hebrews wrote:

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:5-11)

Though God would judge his people, the judgment was designed to reform them, not destroy them. Like a teacher giving a test, like the drill sergeant pushing his recruits the last mile, like the trainer telling you to give him another pushup, so what God was doing and would do to Israel was not from spite or hatred or just so God could vent. It came out of a desire to fix a problem, a serious weakness in the soul of his people. And so, to help them understand, God offered his assurance through Isaiah, that as tired and hurt and struggling and miserable as today was, every sunset carries the promise of sunrise. Dawn follows the darkness of midnight. The discipline would pay off.

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You will probably never find a secret to let you smile through all the hard times and really mean it (you can pretend easily enough, maybe even play some good mind games; but if that’s all it is, it won’t last). All of us have heard people, over the years, quote the verse which goes:

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)

In every crisis I have ever faced I have wanted to get to that place, to realize that peace that passes all understanding. In my mind, I imagined it to be a place I could find somewhere inside, a place metaphorically made of rolling green hills and a few gnarled trees, and somewhere close by, a babbling brook, where the air was comfortable and soft. It was a place where I would no longer feel bad or afraid and I wouldn’t hurt anymore. I wanted the bad feeling that came from any crisis to go away and leave me alone.

For instance, many years ago, our foster baby died of SIDS. We were soon hit with a 31 million dollar wrongful death lawsuit (along with the county and the hospital and our foster finding agency). In the middle of my days, or at night as I stared at the ceiling, I wanted something to replace the heavy weight on my chest, the sense of despair and emptiness, the sense of being abandoned and alone and all the other negative feelings. But nothing would ever happen. My feelings did not change. When I prayed, I felt nothing; reading the Bible was unsatisfying. I maintained my daily pattern: since I was sixteen, I have read through the Bible once a year, every year, and so I continued that practice during the three years from our foster baby’s death through until the lawsuit was finally tossed out and dismissed. And you know what? I never felt better. Time healed the wound of that baby’s death and the stress of the lawsuit.The phone call from my attorney that the lawsuit had been tossed out—dismissed–is what finally made me feel good good again.

Was I somehow not spiritual enough? Was I a bad person? Did I not have enough faith? Why couldn’t I have felt the way I felt after I got the phone call from my attorney the whole time I was going through the crisis? Why could I not have found relief from the stress, a stress that daily was like having someone pounding on my head with a small hammer, without letup, for months and years?

And yet, when I look at the Bible, I find that how I felt, the way I handled my crisis, was not any different than the way any of them did. May of the Bible characters complained during their suffering. Jacob complained that everything was against him. Genesis 42:36). Moses complained that he had done just what God told him to do and all that happened was that everything got worse. (Exodus 5:22-23) Abraham complained that he had no heir (Genesis 15:1-3). Even Jesus complained in the Garden (Matthew 26:38-44)–and later on the cross (Matthew 27:46). And you know what? I’ve come to understand something significant and profound.

The peace of God is not always a feeling. Sometimes it is a doing.

It means being able to get up every day and do what you have to do even though you feel like dog dung. It means reading your Bible, it means praying, it means loving people and loving God even when there’s nothing inside that seems to make it easy or natural. The peace of God is simply knowing—as reflected in what Peter said when Jesus asked him, “are you going to leave, too?”—that somehow God is still there and you have no other option each day but just to keep on living and abiding in Him.

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:66-69)

You come to realize that all is really going to be okay, despite how it looks. You are not free of pain, the baby stays dead, but you decide to trust that God really does know what he is doing and it really will be okay, because no matter what, you still have God and he still has you and he loves you and knows what he is doing. So the anxiety eventually fades.

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