Faithfulness Big and Small: A Devotional Thought

In 2 Kings 5:11-20, we find some well-worn Sunday-School flannel graph material that raises some poignant questions about faithfulness, obedience and the life of a disciple. The back story goes like this: Naaman, a wealthy, influential and powerful Syrian Warrior, was suffering from leprosy and went to the Hebrew prophet Elisha for healing. Elisha sends a message that Naaman must wash 7 times in the Jordan river and he'll be miraculously healed. Naaman is deeply offended. He expected Elisha to come out and do some grand gesture befitting a general of his stature: laying on of hands, elaborate incantations, bells and whistles. Instead he gets a simple directive to wash in the Jordan. Naaman leaves in a huff, but his servants ask him a very obvious, but very profound question: "If the prophet had told you to do some great thing, you'd have done it, why, then will you not do this small thing he's asked you to do?" (v. 13). Why, indeed, except that the small act of obedience-- the simple thing-- doesn't appeal to his pride, as much as the grand gesture of spiritual super-heroism might have. Naaman can't prove how deserving he is of God's mercy and blessing, in the small act of obedience; he can't show God justified in choosing to heal the likes of him, through a simple act of straight-forward and relatively easy obedience. Can he? And that, I think, is Elisha's point.

It gets me thinking about the ways I neglect the small acts of obedience-- the simple, straight-forward stuff that God asks me to do-- because they don't appeal to my spiritual pride (even as I tell myself that, if God were to ask for some grand act of surrender or sacrifice, surely I'd do it). And it reminds me of Jesus' words about how those who are unfaithful in the small things won't be faithful in the big. And it leaves me praying God would give me deeper and truer faithfulness in the little things, that my discipleship would turn on that.