This is the second part of a three part series on the healing of Naaman, the fierce general of the Kingdom of Aram-Damascus, described in 2 Kings 5.

The Lord has done great things for us and we are glad” Ps. 126:3
Gratitude rises in Naaman’s heart like the sun coming up on a clear, warm spring morning. His gleaming power and prestige as a battle hero and commander of the Aram-Damascus armies had been overshadowed by the cold chill of condemnation. All of his abilities, titles and achievements were about to be subsumed by a one-word description–“Leper.” He faced a slow, rotting, disfiguring death isolated behind a wall of fear and shame.

As the general counsel of a world-renowned academic medical center, I have observed that nothing sharpens the hearing acuity of the rich and powerful like words that strip their lives down to a diagnosis–cancer, ALS, MS or AIDS come to mind.  Listening is not an activity prized by the proud, the celebrated and the self-sufficient. But illness and pain are powerful teachers and their voices will not be denied.

So it is that God speaks his truth to Naaman’s power through an adolescent Hebrew slave girl, the plain-spoken prophet Elisha of Israel, and Naaman’s servants. Naaman, reduced to unaccustomed desperation, listens and surrenders himself to the grace of the sovereign God of Israel in a muddy stream in a foreign land. In a preview of baptism into the new life of Salvation, God comes to Naaman in the waters of the Jordan as promised. “For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and lowly place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Isa. 57:15). “For ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble’ ” (1 Pet. 5:5).

Naaman rises from Elisha’s prescribed seven immersions in the Jordan cleansed and with his skin healthy and whole. Naaman’s humbled heart is now the exclusive property of Yahweh, the God of Israel. Far from his Damascus palace, Naaman stands with his whole retinue in the dooryard of Elisha’s house and testifies. “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.” Then he offers, “Please accept a present from your servant” (2 Kings. 5:15).

Gratitude is the confirmation of faith because it confesses that God is responsible for all that we are and all that we have. Gratitude admits that we have listened and heard God and recognize his gracious authority expressed in mercy. That a powerful and feared foreigner would make this admission is a stunning revelation to the nation and people of Israel who are tending to pay faithless lip service to their God.

Jesus healed ten men of leprosy after they begged him for mercy. He sent them to the temple for confirmation of their cure so that they could reenter full participation in society and worship. Only one of the healed men, a Samaritan, returned to Jesus and prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet in thanks. “Then ‘Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return to give praise to God except this foreigner? Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well’ ” (Luke 17:11-19).

The Giver gives because he wants you to enjoy the gift. Your blessing is the desire of his heart. This Yah weh is the only and complete God. He promises to love you all day and sings songs to you throughout your darkest night. Even when you have to take the lonely walk through the shadows that threaten you with the unknown and death, he promises to be right there with you, to hold and soothe your head pounding with over-thinking and doubts, to lavish upon your life the extravagant grace of the Creator (Ps. 23).

Your gratitude tells this loving Father that his prodigal child is really home for a relationship; that the coldly resentful elder sibling is now coming inside the house to talk and laugh and share.

Your thanksgiving tells Jesus Christ that the terrible ordeal of the Cross that he endured for you with a pain so intense that the word “excruciating” was coined to describe it, counts where it matters most; in the daily unfolding of the new life that is his truth and his gift to you. Because gratitude makes this connection between our human life and the Divine, it changes us in the way that plugging in a lamp lights up a dark room. Even as we acknowledge the Source of our life by thanking him, he moves into our soul with love and light.

Here is a how Ellen Vaughn describes this change in a wonderful book on that I commend to you: Radical Gratitude:Discovering Joy through Everyday Thankfulness (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005)—

Few of us want to cozy up to the fact that most often God changes us in the process of ordinary day-to-day dependence on Him. We change most not in the great dramas of life, but in the small acts of submission that no one sees but Him, like when we thank Him in a hard circumstance, rather than railing, “Why me?” (As Ravi Zacharias has noted, people never wail, “Why me?” when they win the lottery.)
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Developing the meditative habit of constantly whispering thanks to Him–no matter what the situation–is in fact a mustard seed of life-changing power. Radical, for it goes to the very root of who we are. Small, seemingly insignificant, yet it has the power to change our lives and blow our socks off, right in the midst of the everyday. When we really give God thanks in everything, we are acknowledging that He is sovereign and that we trust Him. And we find that it changes us(p. 44).
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If you are stalled and drifting in your spiritual life and human relationships right now, I commend the practice of radical gratitude to you.

If I’ve learned anything as an attorney, boss, husband and father, it is that criticism and pressure rarely bring positive change and whatever the impact, it won’t last. The acids of fear and intimidation corrode the vital connections of relationships until they die. Gratitude expressed lightens the heart, encourages the soul and lubricates and restores relationships. In fact, gratitude admits that there is a relationship and that it is valued. Lives that were created to love will respond to gratitude in the way that wildflowers respond to rain.

It is no overstatement to say that living joyfully in gratitude is the difference between spiritual life and freedom on one hand and bondage and death on the other. Moses warned the children of Israel about this in his valedictory address before they entered the Promised Land. “Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and with gladness of heart for the abundance of everything, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord shall send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and lack of everything. He will put an iron yoke on you until he has destroyed you” (Deut. 28:47-48).

Naaman has lived his life to date in power with others submitting to him in fear or obligation. Gratitude is a new emotion to him because he never needed anything before. In his darkest moment, when his power and rage failed him, he submitted to God and experienced a cleansing that left his spirit fresh and open. Now he remains in the flow of grace by expressing his gratitude for his healing and new life.