Day 73

 

The Eyes Have It

 

And Elisha prayed, "O Lord, open his eyes so he may see." Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

 

2 Kings 6:7

 

A lady, who was not a church member, came to my office asking for financial help. The way churches in our community handled these requests was through  the Ministerial Alliance. The Ministerial Alliance had a set of rules we operated under, one of which was that each request needed to get the signatures of 3 different pastors in town before the request could be granted. There were several good reasons to do it that way but I won't get into that now. I started the lady in the process, got her form filled out, signed my name and sent her on her way with directions to where she might find other pastors.

She had not been out of my office 2 minutes when my son called. He had a lawn mowing business and was loading the riding mower on the trailer when a belt came off of the mower as he was loading it on the trailer.

So I left the church, drove to my house and went to my back yard where Ethan was working on the mower. I began to help him and had not been at it very long when the lady who had been asking for financial help showed up. She saw us in the yard and came back to where we were and said, "Brother Jess sent me over here with this form to be signed."

"No he didn't," I informed her.

"Yes he did. He said I could get it signed here."

"No he didn't tell you that. Brother Jess sent you to the Methodist or the Presbyterian Church to get the form signed."

"No, he told me to come to this house."

"I'm pretty sure Brother Jess didn't send you to this house because this is Brother Jess' house and I am Brother Jess."

Then, quiet to my astonishment she said, "No you're not."

I had to tell her, "Yes, I am. I spoke to you less than 10 minutes ago at the church. I am wearing the exact same clothes. I assure you I know who I am. I did not send you here because I never send anyone to my home, plus I have already signed your form."

She took some convincing but I finally persuaded her to move on. I don't know what her problem was (besides lying). Could she really not see that I was the exact same person she had talked to just minutes before?

You know a lot of people don't see things clearly. They see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe. Some people see things objectively and that is a vast improvement over seeing things subjectively. It is still not the way we need to see things though. We need to see things not only objectively but also with eyes of faith.

Elisha was a thorn in the Aramean's side. The king of Aram sent a sizable force of soldiers to deal with Elisha. A servant of Elisha woke up one morning to see that they were surrounded by Aramean troops. Objectively things looked bad for Elisha but Elisha had eyes of faith. He could see what his servant could not. He prayed that the servant's eyes would be opened to the army of angels that was protecting them. The end result was that the army that was sent to trap Elisha wound up being trapped itself.

We all need to see things clearly, objectively. We also need eyes of faith to see God at work and the wonders he can perform.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read 2 Kings 6:8-23

• Why was the king of Aram upset with Elisha?
• Who was it that was outnumbered?
• Of all the people in this story who was the only one could truly see what was happening?