WHY WON'T YOU DO THE EASY THING??!!

In some ways, the Old Testament reading is perfectly timed.

Today was the Cue to Cue rehearsal for The Sound of Music.  For non-theatre people, that's a supremely strange rehearsal that is SUPER intense for techies and super annoying for actors where we run every light, sound, projection cue and every transition repeatedly as we try to find the right levels and get everything just right.

It's the perfect rehearsal to come home and read about a man who refused to do the simple thing because surely surely salvation must be more complicated than that.  Surely, surely, it couldn't be that simple.

No, Naaman.  Really it could.  No, actors.  Really we can.

In some ways, however, this reading is poorly timed, because I'm a little too exhausted to really go down the rabbit hole of unraveling the gospel.

Here is what I think might be a key to something that has gotten in the way of a point of my faith -- belief in physical miracles.  I confessed to my mother recently that I don't.  Because I can't.

I can't believe in miracles.  Because when I prayed for one most, one didn't come.  And because I can't think of any trite little reason that could possible counterbalance the harm done by refusing the miracle.

To be clear, I believe that prayer affects spiritual strength and that that can have profound effects on the world.  But reversing the physical laws of nature?  I can't.  I feel somewhere in me that it's wrong or a flaw in my faith.  But I can't.

I'm saying I understand why saying that to those people would make them want to throw Jesus off a cliff.  Why the hell DIDN'T Elisha save the "many lepers" in Israel?  What was so special about Naaman?  More accurately, what wasn't special about all the rest of them?

Why DIDN'T Elijah save all the widows?  Why not the deserving widow one town over from the one he picked?

It's a bitterness.  Why not my loved one?  Why not my precious person?  If miracles come for good or even just some people, why NOT Tom Mulvaney?  Beloved, wise judge in a key position to do so much more good than most of us will ever have the chance to do?

Are we really meant to blame ourselves for not believing it could work?  Is that truly the message here?  That we are too complacent with Jesus's presence among us and go away without believing properly?

Jesus wasn't kidding about His message being hard to take.  I confess, I'm still struggling with this one.  And I'm weary enough from the busyness of my day that I am going to sleep without having solved it now.