Serving Bread

18 And he said, “Take the arrows,” and he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground with them.” And he struck three times and stopped. 19 Then the man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck five or six times; then you would have struck down Syria until you had made an end of it, but now you will strike down Syria only three times.”

2 Kings 13.18-19

Elisha, one of the most powerful prophets of the Old Testament, is on his death-bed but has it in him for one more prophetic exercise. Judah’s King Josiah visits him to pay his final respects, when Elisha gives Josiah a picture of what is to come. In this final prophecy, Elisha paints a couple of pictures for Josiah. In this particular picture, he asks the king to beat the ground with arrows. When Josiah only beats it three times, Elisha confronts him for his underwhelming action.

On the one hand, Josiah had no idea what his beating on the ground actually means.  To his credit, if the king knew what he finds out later, he probably would have beat the ground a thousand times. I don’t want to read what’s not in the text, but one of the ways I read this text is that it is a parable to the reader. The reader sees Josiah missing an opportunity. The reader sees the big picture and is faced with the question: Would you really do more than Josiah if you knew what he doesn’t know? In my observations, the answer is no. We wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.

If I really knew all the resources and the power of God available to me, how would I live my life differently? How would my prayers look? How would my ministry look? In the past several weeks, there have been three instances where God has met my prayers in very specific ways: 1. My colleague, Ruth, surpassed the 80% mark of raising her ministry budget by move-in weekend at CSUN; 2. God gave us 100 names during our orientation tabling; 3. God brought 150 students to our BBQ.

Those were things we prayed for, and God honored those prayers. But for some reason, this passage has come my way in light of the good ways God has honored our prayers. Regardless of whether our prayers reflected faith or security, I have learned a few lessons in the past several weeks. The theme of those lessons can be summed up with: Both God and I are too small in my eyes.

1. I get surprised too easily when God honors my prayers. Rather than believing that God answers prayers, my default is often that God won’t answer prayers and sometimes he chooses to do so.
2. My faith stretches as far as my eyes can see. I don’t want to be disappointed by God. I want to ask God what I think God can offer me. I fear that if I ask for too much and believe God for too much, it won’t happen.
3. I need a defense when God doesn’t deliver. The great taboo topic in Christian circles seems to be: Why didn’t God answer my prayer? We have pre-packaged answers to that question because we don’t want to live in the mystery and in the unknown. I need to convince myself that there is something I did or didn’t do that warranted God not honoring my prayer. I rarely want to wrestle with God over those disappointments.

The parable in this passage is: Would I strike the arrows more than 3 times? Will I lift up passionate, faith-stretching prayers to God? Will I believe God for resources that my eyes can’t see? Will I believe God for victories that seem impossible? Will I strike the arrows more than 3 times?

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