The Works of God

Remember that Naaman is the commander of a foreign, hostile army as he approaches the king of Israel.  We will learn later about some of his travelling party, but we should assume that he is travelling with a sufficiently large military force that the king of Israel would think twice before dealing badly with him, such as imprisoning or even killing him.

And the king of Israel assumes this isn’t really about Naaman receiving healing, but about Syria looking for a reason to invade.  After all, the king of Israel has just been asked to perform a miracle.  If he had that power, he would be doing it for his own people who have leprosy.  Since he can’t, and the king of Syria certainly must know he can’t, it must be about something else entirely.

Any parent who has sat in an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting knows what the king of Israel is feeling.  We are given reams of documents, most of which are unintelligible, by people with impressive credentials.  And they frequently make no sense – just as this letter to the king of Israel made no sense to him.

So, like the king of Israel, I live with the suspicious thought that these IEP documents don’t really mean what they say, that there is another agenda which results in their seeking to deny services to my son.  I prepare myself for battle.

But my doubts about the authenticity of the message are not always confirmed – sometimes the agenda really is what is written on the paper.  And sometimes it takes another person to help me see it.  As we’ll see in Part 5.