Sometimes we face those moments when we can go no further. Life has thrown us into the dust, and we can’t even look up. We have the blinders of depression obscuring every good thing that used to come our way. We are certain God has abandoned us, and he will no longer answer our prayers.
Take leprosy in the Old Testament. In Israel, contracting the dread disease was an indication of such severe sin that the leper was denied all contact with anyone except other lepers. He wasn’t even allowed to approach the city for basic necessities such as food and water. Being a leper was hopeless. There was nowhere lower anyone could go, except for war and the starvation it brought.
And Israel was at war. Famine had overtaken the land. The city was under siege by the Syrians. The starvation was so oppressive parents had taken to eating their own children. Yet the king of Israel would not turn to God. Rather, he threatened to behead the prophet Elisha, who had done nothing but serve as the hand of God in an unbelieving land, saving the nation over and over with his godly advice.
Even so, God did not abandon Israel.
At the depths of the siege, Elisha prophesied that very soon grain would be so abundant in the land that it would be sold for almost nothing. A shekel in today’s terms was worth less than a dollar. Elisha pronounced that a measure of fine flour (enough for twenty loaves of bread) would be sold for a shekel and two measures of barley for the same.
Elisha was laughed at, for who could imagine such plenty in a time of famine?
It took four lepers to discover the truth in Elisha’s words. In 2 Kings 7:3-5 they sat outside the gates of the city, and they were just as hungry as those inside the walls. However, they saw the truth as those inside did not.
“Let us not sit here and die,” one of the lepers commented to another.
“What are we to do?” the second leper returned. “Inside the city are starvation and certain death. The Syrians are encamped all around us. We have no options.”
After some discussion they concluded that if they went to the Syrian camp, they would either find food, or they would at least die quickly at their enemies’ hands. As they came to the Syrians’ holdout, expecting to be called down and possibly killed, they found an empty camp, fully stocked, with not a single Syrian in sight.
God had already routed the enemy by his miraculous hand, and the people of Israel were still huddled in their city, starving and eating their own children. Only the four outcasts had taken the initiative to cast their blinders aside and learn the truth.
Sometimes the victory does not come to us in our dire situation. Sometimes we have to be willing to let God lead us outside our problems to see that he has already given us the answer, and we just haven’t yet understood the workings of his mighty hand.
When we are willing to take a risk and throw our blinders aside, God can show us that his answer is already within our grasp.
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