Scripture Daily

Context No. 1833 of 4322 · 2 Kings

Context · Reflection

2 Kings 3:13-19: in context

13Elisha said to the king of Israel, “What have I to do with you? Go to the prophets of your father, and to the prophets of your mother.” The king of Israel said to him, “No, for the LORD has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab.” 14Elisha said, “As the LORD of Armies lives, before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I respect the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look toward you, nor see you. 15But now bring me a musician.” When the musician played, the LORD’s hand came on him. 16He said, “The LORD says, ‘Make this valley full of trenches.’ 17For the LORD says, ‘You will not see wind, neither will you see rain, yet that valley will be filled with water, and you will drink, both you and your livestock and your other animals. 18This is an easy thing in the LORD’s sight. He will also deliver the Moabites into your hand. 19You shall strike every fortified city and every choice city, and shall fell every good tree, and stop all springs of water, and mar every good piece of land with stones.’”

Three kings, marching against Moab, run out of water in the wilderness and turn to the prophet Elisha. Elisha, after calling for a musician so that the hand of the LORD comes upon him, delivers God's word: dig this valley full of trenches. You will see no wind and no rain, yet the valley will be filled with water, and you and your animals will drink. And he adds, as though it were nothing, this is a light thing in the sight of the LORD; and he will also give Moab into your hand.

The phrase to hold onto is Elisha's aside: this is a light thing in the sight of the LORD. To the three kings, dying of thirst in a dry valley, the problem was overwhelming, a matter of life and death with no natural solution in sight; no clouds, no rain, no water anywhere. And God, through Elisha, calls it a light thing, a small matter, easily done. What was impossible to the kings was trivial to God. This gap, between what overwhelms us and what is easy for God, is worth pondering. The things that loom over us as impossible, that fill us with dread because we can see no way through them, are not impossible or overwhelming to God; they are, in the words of the passage, light things in his sight. Filling a waterless valley without wind or rain is no strain for the God who made the seas; and the problems that feel insurmountable to us are, to him, easily within his power. This does not mean God will always solve our problems in the way or the timing we wish; his ways are his own. But it does recalibrate our sense of the difficult. We measure our troubles against our own resources, and rightly find many of them impossible; but the measure that matters is God's power, and against that, our impossibilities are light things. This should change how we pray and how we worry. We bring our overwhelming problems to God as though they might overwhelm him too, as though we needed to convince him they can be solved. But there is nothing too hard for him; the thing that crushes us is a light thing in his sight. To remember this is to be freed from a good deal of dread: not because our problems are small, they are not, to us, but because they are small to God, who fills dry valleys without a cloud in the sky. Is anything too hard for the LORD? The valley was filled; and the thing that felt impossible was, to God, a light thing.

When a problem looms over me as impossible, filling me with dread because I can see no way through it, do I measure it only against my own resources, or can I remember Elisha's word, that what overwhelms me is a light thing in the sight of the LORD, and bring my impossibility to the God for whom nothing is too hard?

Sources