SDfAoWOP: the Girl

Day Thirty-Seven

II Kings 5:2

Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife.

You wake up one morning to find that your leprous but mighty husband has acquired some new help for you. You gather yourself together and face down a battered broken picture, a little girl wrenched from her home and family, swept away in the political and social devastations of the moment. Syria is on the rise. Israel is weak and troubled. This girl, who was once in the comfort of her home with her own mother and father, is now standing alone, having only her own loss and herself to offer. She might easily be a small persistent source of bitterness, of difficulty. You don't let yourself consider what she might have endured, before this moment when you welcome her to your household. What part can a little girl, a child play in the rising and falling of nations and kings?

She turns out to be a help and comfort to you. She doesn't morn and weep for her many losses. Maybe she does but you don't see it. No, in your anxiety and despair over your husband, her captor, she comes to comfort and advise. There is a God, she says, who can heal and save. How can this be? You wonder. How can a little girl, a child, know this God? How can she set aside the bitterness of abuse and loss? But her clear firm gaze, the strength of her words win you over and you go and tell your husband and he listens.

Are you overwhelmed by the news and suffering of the world? By the great sweeping injustices that rise and break like strong rending waves? Are you anxious about those caught up by forces beyond their control? Look into this young girl's eyes. Consider the hope of her words in the midst of her own loss. Much later another young girl will step out and go, alone, with news, as the world crashes and swirls around her way, her eyes and flesh full of the hope of the world.