Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the LORD had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.
So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha's house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, ‘Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.’
But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.
Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.
- 2 Kings 5: 1, 9-14 (NIV)
Even though there are lots of dippers in my family, I am so not one of them. I think people should eat their food and drink their drinks and never the twain should steep. I’m not sure why so many people think that their solids and liquids have to come together to make something that can no longer be classified as either.
I guess that’s why I’m not a big dipper. I’m not a little dipper either. I won’t dip, don’t ask me. To me, dipping is pretty close to an illness. As a matter of fact, when you’re soaking a cookie and mess up on the timing, you have to watch a perfectly good cookie with a composition that’s reduced to mush. I call that Oreo-porosis. Vitamin-fortified milk doesn’t help.
And what about when you leave your tasty little morsel even longer than too long and the entire thing caves? It’s a total crisis of dunking. Do you fish for the lost cookie or donut or whatever (not exactly a high-class move), or do you have a little time of mourning and just let it go? And then when you get to the end of your drink, what do you do with the semi-solids in the last swig? Chewing your drink? That’s just wrong.
I don’t know, maybe it’s a pride thing, but I refuse to dip.
Good thing I’m not in a Naaman kind of position, huh? Elisha told him to dip in the river seven times to get rid of his leprosy, but he wanted something fancier than your basic dunk—and because of his pride he almost missed a healing!
Pride can cause to miss a lot of wonderful things. Thinking we’re too good to minister to this person or too important to lower ourselves to that task—that kind of attitude just doesn’t wash (as it were) in the Kingdom. And how often have we humbled ourselves to serve and found immense blessing in knowing that certain person and great reward in doing that certain task? We can learn humility from the example of Jesus. There was no person on Earth so low that Jesus wouldn’t reach down to him. There was no act of service too humiliating—from washing his disciples’ feet to the ultimate act of humility, the humiliation of the cross.
Does your spirit need some healing? Strip away that pride and dip into the humility of Christ. When we line our humility goals up with the example of Jesus, the humble way of life becomes something we can really sink our teeth into.
On the lighter side, though, when it comes to drinking cookie pulp, I’m pretty sure I’ll never be sinking my teeth into that. I’ll always find that hard to swallow.
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