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Posts Tagged ‘2 kings 5’

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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