My grandson goes back to school full time “in person” today. COVID numbers are down in Kentucky, school personnel have been vaccinated, and children are returning to classrooms. It’s March. Eli’s in first grade—and he’s been to school in the school building less than two weeks all year. In many ways, today is his first day of school.
Last spring, when local schools went virtual, he was in kindergarten and struggling in multiple ways. Today, he is reads on grade level, enjoys learning (mostly), and is ready for the classroom. God wrote straight with crooked lines for him this COVID year–even though the picture for this reflection is his t-shirt.
God has written straight with crooked lines for me, too, in this year I have spent mornings with him. We have bonded. We delight in each other. I have learned much from him and from his wonderful teacher this year—about teaching young children, about teaching online, about rejoicing in childhood. What began last spring as a COVID coping sacrifice became a beautiful work of God in our family. Straight writing with crooked lines. The difficulties of COVID became a blessing.
Naaman, Elisha, and the Little Girl
I’ve spent some time this week praying from the first reading through Ignatian contemplation: I have imagined myself as characters in the story. I began by putting myself in the place of the little girl. I imagined her to be captured by the Arameans and taken from her family around age eight. She became a servant in Naaman’s family. How frightening, how hard it must have been to be taken from home, then placed in the home of the very commander who may well have killed her parents in the fighting. Still, they must have been good to her, because, when Naaman got leprosy, the child didn’t say, “serves him right for stealing me from home.” Instead, she sought to get Naaman healed by the Hebrew prophet, Elisha. Who would have thought! A stolen child as an emissary of healing and peace (though St. Patrick’s story was similar.) As I imagined being her, I had a strong sense of God’s goodness in her, as well as her tremendous courage and resiliency.
She (and doubtless also Naaman’s wife) was persistent enough that Naaman went to Aram, the king of the Arameans, to ask permission to visit Elisha. Aram said go—and sent gifts to the Hebrew king.
At this point in the story, I imagine myself Naaman. As I journey to Samaria, I look at the countryside that I had previously warred against. I see things rebuilt. I see people look at me with fear. I am a warrior, a commander. It is my job to make war. Still, it is hard, now that I have leprosy, to see the people turn from me. In my culture, lepers need not call out, “unclean,” yet in this culture they do. I am unclean. The King of Israel does not truly welcome me. He does not see my possible healing as an opportunity for peace. His attitude tells me he isn’t anything like as sure this prophet can cure me as this little Hebrew girl is. Do I look like a fool coming all this way to beg for healing? What will this holy man do or say? Will the leprosy go away immediately?
Now, as Naaman, I come before this prophet’s house. I hate to do it, but, yes, I will kneel before him and beg. But, what? This prophet sends me a message—a foolish message! Go bathe seven times in the Jordan River? That dirty, nasty thing! Why not the Euphrates? I do feel like a fool! I’ve been tricked, conned. These Hebrews obey their rules so carefully they send me, commander of their enemy, away. They mock me. My anger builds.
But my servants reason with me. “What have you got to lose?” they say. They have a point. I guess I might as well go all the way with this ruse. Still, I am looking around at this land, hoping the disease does not get me before I can come back to lay this land low. Anger turns to bitterness and hatred.
But then….THEN I go down in the muddy Jordan River. Once. Twice. Three times. There is a tingling in my skin. And warmth, like it is being touched by a Power. Am I imagining this? Four times. No, the tingling and the warmth are real. Five times. Six. As I come up out of the water the seventh time I look. My skin is clean. Clear. Not even hard. Not sore. Healthy. Like an infant’s skin.
Awe, wonder, joy pour over me. This God these Hebrews serve—this God is REAL. And this real God healed me—enemy, plunderer of his people. Who is this God? My mind swims in confusion, but my heart explodes in wonder, love, and joy.
I return, in great gratitude, to this prophet’s house and bow before him with real humility and respect. “Now I know that there is no God in the earth, except in Israel,” I say. My Lord and my God!
How straight and clear Naaman’s profession of faith! How complex, with war and slavery, were the crooked lines that led to it.
Jesus
You Can’t Go Home Again was a famous novel by Thomas Wolfe. In the novel, a fledgling, yet published, author returns to his home town, only to be met with vengeance and hatred. He had written about what he knew, and his neighbors felt naked on his pages. He had told too much truth. Crooked lines.
Likewise, in today’s Gospel, Jesus has returned to Nazareth. He, too, is met with resentment when he speaks truth to his neighbors. They are ready to push him over the side of the hill! He wanted to work miracles there, but those who knew him through the years couldn’t believe that he could do it. Without faith, he couldn’t.
Crooked lines. What was the straight of it? Perhaps it was Jesus realizing Truth comes at a price. Perhaps it was a foretaste of rejections to come. We do not know the effects of all this on his neighbors and friends. Perhaps they have to doubt now to later believe.
And Us
Eli’s successful readiness for first grade is not the only straight line written with the crooked marks of COVID in my life. I’ve settled into a schedule that better matches my age than the one I had. I have a better appreciation of this aging time I am entering and the Benedictine habits that have come to make even forced solitude a joyful retreat. Yet some of the crooked lines are harsh, painful: friends lost to COVID, economic hardships, the perennial question–“What is God doing?” There are polarities with friends and partings yet to come that must be grieved and accepted.
Still, Naaman reminds me: a story that begins with violence, a simple piece of information given from an open heart, a journey of hope, an affront from a person expected to be visibly holy, a simple act of dipping in a river. All are crooked lines with which God wrote straight the Truth, the Compassion, the Fidelity of His love.
What might God write in my life today? In yours?
Prayer:
Lord, help me to believe in Your Truth, Your Compassion, Your Fidelity when all I can see are crooked lines. Help me to trust, to follow You carefully, and to respond to whatever circumstances life puts me in with my best efforts at truth, compassion, and faithfulness. Lead me, guide me, Lord.
