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Archive for August, 2009

2 Kings 5 is for Parents of Kids with Disabilities – Part 8

Posted in Scripture, tagged , on August 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Finally, we arrive at the real point of this account in 2 Kings 5!

Usually when the story of Naaman is told, the emphasis is on his disease and the healing.  Those things are just a means to this extraordinary outcome that comes AFTER he is cleansed from his leprosy:

Then he (Naaman) returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and he came and stood before him. And he said, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; so accept now a present from your servant.” 2 Kings 5:15

There is NO GOD IN ALL THE EARTH BUT IN ISRAEL is the point of 2 Kings 5.   A pagan-worshipping commander of a foreign, hostile army has just proclaimed the God of Isreal as the single god of the earth.  And he has declared this before his entire company!

God orchestrated everything – from the success Naaman experienced to the leprosy he had to the slave girl being placed in his house to the King of Israel’s robe-tearing response to the humble common sense of Naaman’s own servants to the cleansing in the river itself.  Why? So that Naaman could have this understanding of God which, like the healing of his leprosy, was impossible but for God’s granting it to him.

And, as parents, we also have strange sets of circumstances surrounding us because of our childrens’ disabilities, but with an assurance that Naaman did not have:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

You may be thinking, “that is all well and good for Naaman because he was cleansed of his disease.  Miracles tend to encourage people to make much of God. I would make much of God if that happened to me or my child.”

Not always:

And as he (Jesus) entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” 14 When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan.

Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”  Luke 17-12-19

As in 2 Kings 5, a foreigner is given understanding.  The cleansing is certainly a gift.  But faith is the much greater gift.  If you have faith in God, you have already been given the better gift.

Two more sections to go on 2 Kings 5:  why Elisha refuses the gifts offered by Naaman, and how being in the presence of Godly men is not the same as embracing God personally.

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2 Kings 5 is for Parents of Kids with Disabilities – Part 7

Posted in Scripture, tagged , on August 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »

If you are just joining this series (posted while I’m on vacation – I’ll read comments when I return!), I would recommend reading the first six posts on this subject.

2 Kings 5 is part of the great revelation of God’s majesty, goodness, mercy and delight in himself and his sovereignty over everything.  And it contains some lessons that are applicable to everyone, but ones that I have found particularly helpful as a dad of a child with a disability.

Today deals with the actual cleansing of Naaman, which is what most people focus on as the point and focus of 2 Kings 5.  It is not the point.  That will come later.

2 Kings 5:13-14

But his servants came near and said to him, “My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

In Part 6 Naaman goes away from Elisha’s house in a rage because he has not been received with the honor and respect he thought he deserved.

Fortunately, he has brought people with him.  His relationship with them is such that, even though he is a powerful man in authority over them, they feel like they can bring some common sense to him: will you not do this thing that could bring you what you desire most?  To his credit, he listens to them!  He follows their advice and the instructions he has been given – and God performs a miracle for this pagan Naaman that God is not doing for the people of Israel, at least not as a normal practice.

We need such people in our lives, who will enter into our rage or bitterness or hurt and speak a good work of truth and common sense.  God was good to provide such people for Naaman and I know he has been good to provide such people for me.  Listening to their advice is not always easy, and as parents we must keep the responsibility of discerning what is best for our children. But a good word at the right moment has more than once kept me from doing a foolish thing.

Parents, part of God’s good provision to us are the people in our lives.  Pray that he would provide the right ones to you.

In Part 8, if the cleansing of his leprosy wasn’t the point of 2 Kings 5, what is?

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2 Kings 5 is for Parents of Kids with Disabilities – Part 6

Posted in Scripture, tagged , on August 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Part 1 – In verse one we see God’s sovereignty in Naaman’s life, just as God is sovereign and intentional in our lives.

Part 2 – In verses two and three we see God orchestrating really unusual things so that a powerless foreign slave girl can deliver good news to the powerful man, just as we are called in our situations to bring good news.

Part 3 – We are reminded that a wealthy, powerful man desperately wants to be healed of his disease, and nobody thus far has been able to help him, just as our children will always live with their disabilities.

Part 4 – The king of Israel knows he doesn’t have the power to heal and assumes the king of Syria is looking for a reason to invade, just as we assume people involved with our children are not always telling us the entire story.

Part 5 – Elisha corrects one in authority over him, just as we must at times correct people who are supposed to serve our children.

Part 6 – 2 Kings 5:9-12
So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha’s house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” So he turned and went away in a rage.

We are given a clear sign that Naaman has not travelled alone to Israel, and that he intentionally wanted to demonstrate he is a man of power.  Horses and chariots throughout the bible and history are evidences of power and wealth. And, he has probably been received as just such a man as he has travelled to the king of Israel. That all changes when he comes to visit Elisha.

Elisha’s response is very interesting – let the boy go give him the news.  Again, Elisha doesn’t appear to have much respect for authority.  But he is making sure that the message gets delivered.  The point is, after all, that Naaman be cleansed of his serious skin disease. Which should Naaman prefer:  good social skills or the solution to his problem?

Unfortunately, I’ve been tempted to respond like Naaman when doctors, social workers, or educators haven’t treated me like I thought I should be treated – regardless of how they might be able to serve my son.  For some reason, medical specialists in particular seem to have few (or no) social skills.  And they also frequently happen to be the people with the greatest opportunity to help my son.

The lesson here for us parents: your goal is to have a good outcome for your child, not to be treated with respect.  I greatly appreciate when I am treated well as his dad, but that also shouldn’t cloud my judgment about getting a good outcome.  Very kind, respectful people may be incompetent.

And only God knows what’s really going on.  We should never fully trust experts, but should always fully trust God.

For Part 7: why we should not try to do this alone.

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2 Kings 5 is for Parents of Kids with Disabilities – Part 5

Posted in Scripture, tagged on August 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Part 1 – In verse one we see God’s sovereignty in Naaman’s life.

Part 2 – In verses two and three we see God orchestrating really unusual things so that a powerless foreign slave girl can deliver good news to the powerful man.

Part 3 – We are reminded that a wealthy, powerful man desperately wants to be healed of his disease, and nobody thus far has been able to help him.

Part 4 – The king of Israel knows he doesn’t have the power to heal and assumes the king of Syria is looking for a reason to invade.
Part 5 – 2 Kings 5:8
But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king, saying, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.”

I love the people in my life who have such confidence in God that they are literally afraid of nobody.  Respectful, careful in their words, gracious and kind, but without any fear of man.  It was one such couple who knew that they could not do or say anything to comfort me, in fact had to put up with quite a bit of foolish, heretical talk from me in the worst days when I had no hope and was consumed with bitterness over my son’s disabilities, who God used to bring me back to himself.

Elisha is such a man.  He is speaking down to the king of Israel, as if he were a foolish child rather than a king in a difficult diplomatic mess.  Elisha knows God is doing something, and is confident God will make much of himself.  We do not know if Elisha had already been given instruction from the Lord on what he was to say to Naaman.  Even with that knowledge, however, how many of us would speak this way to a person in authority, especially a king with the power of life and death?

And we must be Elishas for our children, speaking truth to authority and guiding next steps.  More than once I have entered those IEP meetings and said, “no, we aren’t going to do it your way, we’re going to do it this way.”  The figurative ‘tearing of clothes’ is obvious at those times.  The various logical reasons are presented and objections placed on the table.  But with persistence and appeal to federal and state law, I frequently get what I ask.  And I know I carry a certain confidence into those meetings because I know my rights and my son’s rights.

Thus, how much more confidence did Elisha have!  He was a prophet of God, who is a much higher authority than any king or any rule of law.  And Elisha’s God is our God!  Jesus himself is our advocate!

That doesn’t mean that people will appreciate what we have to say, however, as we will see in Part 6.

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2 Kings 5 is for Parents of Kids with Disabilities – Part 4

Posted in Scripture, tagged on August 11, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Part 1 – In verse one we see God’s sovereignty in Naaman’s life.

Part 2 – In verses two and three we see God orchestrating really unusual things so that a powerless foreign slave girl can deliver good news to the powerful man.

Part 3 – We are reminded that a wealthy, powerful man desperately wants to be healed of his disease, and nobody thus far has been able to help him.

Part 4 – 2 Kings 5:6-7
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.”

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.

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2 Kings 5 is for Parents of Kids with Disabilities – Part 3

Posted in Scripture, tagged on August 10, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Part 1 – In verse one we see God’s sovereignty in Naaman’s life.

Part 2 – In verses two and three we see God orchestrating really unusual things so that a powerless foreign slave girl can deliver good news to the powerful man.

Part 3 – 2 Kings 5:4-5

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.

Lest we forget or minimize who Naaman is, he is a man of great authority.  He has the opportunity to see his lord, apparently without the need to be summoned.  He recounts the seemingly crazy thing that the slave girl told his wife.  The king wants the best for him and takes him seriously, even writing a letter to a foreign king.  Then Naaman wanders off with 750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold.  The clothes must have also been either symbolically valuable or actually valuable to be mentioned (and they come up again near the end of chapter 5 in an important way).

This is not a nice little fairy tale exclusively for children. Important and complex political, economic, military and diplomatic events are happening – ultimately for God’s glory.

And they are happening because nobody can do anything about Naaman’s leprosy – and he desperately, along with his wife, wants to be healed.

Not unlike our own experiences with and desires for our children.  Yet another reason why 2 Kings 5 is for us.

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2 Kings 5 is for Parents of Kids With Disabilities – Part 2

Posted in Scripture, Uncategorized, tagged on August 9, 2009| Leave a Comment »

In 2 Kings 5:1, God’s sovereignty was clearly stated.  As we walk toward the usual highlight of the cleansing, today we see the first of a whole series of really unusual things happening.  And it results in a hard, but good, challenge to me as a parent of a child with a disability.

2 Kings 5:2-3

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.”

Does that strike you as odd?  A little girl is ripped from her home by violent men, she is placed as a slave in the home of a powerful man, and she seems to want the best for this man who is in charge of the men who took her from her home and made her a slave.

Even more strange, she talks about a cure for his leprosy!  Such a cure would not have been a normal thing; why would she have said such a thing?

It is also clear, on this side of the telling of the account, that if that little girl had not a) been taken as a slave, b) been placed in Naaman’s house, c) said something to Naaman’s wife, and d) been taken seriously by Naaman’s wife, then Naaman would not have been healed of his leprosy.

In other words, God is already orchestrating a series of events for the benefit of pagan man who is at the head of an army that is openly hostile and contemptuous of the people of Israel.  People in Israel were probably praying to be spared from this man, and God is already showing him kindness, but in ways that Naaman cannot yet see.

God could have started down this road in a very different way: an angel could have been sent, the Spirit could have spoken directly to him, a prophet could have been given a vision to visit him, a donkey could have talked to him.

But God chose a little girl, without power, likely without any standing at all, to bring good news.  By any rational account, it is the little girl who needs the help.  And we will not read anything more about this girl’s situation in 2 Kings 5.

I have frequently felt powerless when dealing with my son’s care.  I stopped counting the medical specialists we had seen after it topped 30.  I’m not sure, at this point, how many social workers, teachers, therapists and administrators I’ve met with as well.  All have or had pretty serious credentials, and all had some power over what would happen with my son.

But I have never been as powerless as that little slave girl. And, mostly, I have thought only about my situation and not theirs. My eternal situation is secure, and my God is the creator of the universe – should I not be telling, like that little girl did, that there is a cure for the spots on their souls?  Some of Paul’s teachers know of my faith in this God, but it isn’t a very high number of the total.

Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible helpfully lays out a series of extraordinary things that are happening in these two verses, but this one sticks with me in powerful way:

  • The unhappy dispersing of the people of God has sometimes proved the happy occasion of the diffusion of the knowledge of God, Acts 8:4

Parents, have we not also been given an ‘unhappy dispersing’ from what we wanted or expected our lives to be because of our kids’ disabilities?  Should we not at least consider that the very purpose of our childrens’ disabilities is for the ‘happy occasion of the diffusion of the knowledge of God’?

I’ll look forward to your comments when I return from vacation about Aug. 16.

We’ll continue in 2 Kings 5 tomorrow.

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2 Kings 5 Is for Parents of Kids with Disabilities – Part 1

Posted in Scripture, tagged , on August 8, 2009| Leave a Comment »

This account of God’s work in 2 Kings 5 has been a huge encouragement for me as a dad with a boy with multiple disabilities and a wife with cancer.  I pray it will be for you as well.

As I wrote yesterday, I want to tell the story of Naaman as it really is laid out in the Bible.  So, while I’m on vacation (and not able to read or respond to comments) we’ll walk through this account verse by verse.

2 Kings 5:1

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.

Here’s what I see in this first verse:

  • The disease comes last.  It does not define who he is; it is a physical characteristic which is important to Naaman’s story.  But it is not all that he is, unlike how American culture wants to define our kids as being exclusively their disabilities.
  • He is powerful.  His disease has not discounted his other gifts of leadership.
  • He is in positive relationships with others.  The king himself considered him a ‘great man.’
  • He is a mighty man of valor.  His disease is a descriptor of his physical state that did not diminish or define his character – which is marked by valor.
  • God takes credit for giving an enemy of Israel success!

That last point is breathtaking!  God himself takes credit, not for ‘allowing’ Naaman to have victory, but for GIVING victory to Syria by Naaman.  God is not a passive actor in this account, right from the first verse.

Combine this with Exodus 4:11:

Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?”

The result: we have a God who intentionally makes people with disabilities and who purposefully gives enemies victory.  Without shame, and without feeling the need to explain himself.  He gave Naaman victory, and he gave Naaman leprosy.

And that is very good news for us as parents.  If you don’t feel it yet, there’s much more to 2 Kings 5.  More tomorrow.

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Bible Stories Told Badly to Kids Are Dangerous for Adults

Posted in Scripture, tagged , on August 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Bible stories have consequences on children who grow up to be adults who have children with disabilities.

I’m old enough to remember when little cut-out figures made of flannel were used to tell bible stories in Sunday School.  The problem isn’t the flannelgraph.

The problem is that they made God look pathetically small.

Here’s what I mean:

I heard the story of Naaman from 2 Kings 5 as a kid.  In the flannelgraph version, Naaman emerges as this poor guy with spots on his arms and legs.  The teacher would explain that Naaman had these spots because he had a terrible disease.  Somehow or another this poor guy would end up standing before a figure of an old guy with a grey beard who would tell him to go wash in the river.  The little flannelgraph Naaman would get dunked under a blue piece of flannelgraph and lo and behold, the spots, also of flannelgraph, would fall off and he would be clean, or healed, depending on who was telling the story.

The point: wasn’t God good to do that to poor old pathetic Naaman who had that rotten disease?

Fast forward a couple of decades and memories of that story are not helpful when my child is hooked up to tubes and monitors.  And when the tubes and monitors go away, I’m taking a baby with a life-long disability home.  That isn’t going away.  It didn’t appear that I had a nice god to help me, like Naaman got helped.

The real story of Naaman is very relevant to parents of children with disabilities, unlike the version described above.  Ultimately, it is a story about God – a powerful, just, holy, righteous, purposeful, sovereign God who can be trusted in all circumstance with all things.

The kind of God who is a real comfort when your kid is different than other kids, because of disability.

While I’m on vacation the next several days, I’ve written a series of posts on 2 Kings 5 using the text itself and my thoughts on its relevance to our situations.  I look forward to your reaction, and hopefully your being encouraged to trust this God who is not ‘nice,’ but certainly sovereign – over everything.

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