The Lord be with you,
Steimie wrote, concerning the healing of Naaman found in 2 Kings 5:1-19:
God speaks to us through the least likely people and he uses the most unlikely methods. For Naaman, no spectaculars worthy of the divine, just the muddy Jordan. And for us today, no visions, in all probability, with the label “divine” plastered all over them, just ordinary things like …
The Bible. The preacher mentions reading the Bible and the reaction is likely to be almost as violent as Naaman’s tantrum—in reverse! The yawns, the wandering mind, the utter boredom which come to the faces of the people when the preacher suggests reading the Bible. And yet the Bible with its worn and familiar pages is pregnant, like the muddy Jordan, with health and life if, like Naaman, we can be prodded into plunging into it. Even in some of its least likely sections, the fifth chapter of Second Kings, for instance, it still speaks eloquently to our day.
The Bible—and the sacraments. We tend to think of the sacraments as exotic and extraordinary. And yet we miss the point of them if we do not recognize the extraordinary thing about them is that God uses the most ordinary of material things—water, bread, wine—to indicate that he always comes to us in the ordinary stuff of life. We live surrounded by the common, material things of life which are the gift of his hands, and these constant reminders of his presence indicate that the spiritual and the material are not two worlds but one.
You see, there is a considerable difference between looking for God and finding him. You and I are always tempted to think God is to be found by way of kings and protocol, that he ought to act the way we would act if we were God, instead of taking him at his word. Naaman found out and so can we. For Naaman, like the prodigal in the far country, came to himself and accepted himself for what he was in the eyes of God, no captain of the host or man of distinction but simply a man in need of health. It’s all God asks, you know. Just that you come to him without pretension or gifts, simply as a soul in need of his health. And he will cleanse you too.
Are You Looking for God?
Edmund A. Steimie (1907-1988)
My source: For All the Saints, year 1, volume 2, 925-926