Here’s a little teaser that won’t make it into this Sunday’s sermon on finding favor through sorrow, but perhaps if we are in a state of panic and questioning what we can do, we can find a comforting peace to hold us through the thick of it. I want to set the stage. The Syrian Army is at the front door of Elisha’s home. Elisha is the prophet of Israel who had been giving military advice to the King of Israel during a war with the Syrian King. Elisha, in his visions, saw the Syrian military strategy and would advise Israel on how to circumvent it. In anger and dismay, the Syrian King decided instead to lay siege of the city Elisha resided so that he could keep him prisoner until at least after the war because killing a man of God was wrong. When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. And the servant said, Alas, my master! What shall we do? He said, Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them. Then Elisha prayed and said, O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see. So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. – 2 Kings 6:15-17 So imagine the surprise you find on your front porch as you’re getting your newspaper in the morning and find yourself besieged by an army that shouldn’t even be there. Yes, it’s panic! It’s wet your pants panic! It’s the panic of being laid off from work with a mountain of bills to pay. It’s the panic of not being able to make the next month’s rent. It’s the panic of hearing a terminal diagnosis from a doctor. It’s the panic of being awake at 4:56AM with 20 pages left to write on a paper due at 8AM. It’s the same panic you feel when your in-laws come to visit unexpectedly knowing you will be harassed for your dirty house. It’s the panic you feel when you realize that you just let go of the only person that ever loved you. It’s the same panic you experience when you lie bedridden because your body won’t move knowing that you’ll never accomplish what you were made to do and if it ends here, you will be a failure and your life was all for loss. It’s the same panic when you’re just at your wits end and there is nothing you can do because the reality is that you’re surrounded and anywhere you try to go, you lose. What a hopelessness that must be– to ask “What shall we do?” and know that there is nothing you can do. This is the worst type of sorrow a person can experience. It’s a panic that is without hope. Elisha’s servant was experiencing that. He just couldn’t see past the full blown panic mode. His life was about to end! You may write this off as a Biblical fairy tale with “horses and chariots of fire,” but what if I told you that this was real and that God’s power is really that amazingly fierce? I think we so easily start doubting God’s power in our hyper-irrational age and fold Him up to be nothing more than a logical phantasm whose name we invoked as a moralistic pat on the back. But what if we seriously treated God’s power as we would the brute force of horses breathing smoke? Would you be in panic then? Let me ask, what is keeping us from seeing God’s power in this light? Is it because, like Elisha’s servant, we fail to see it? Do you fail to open your eyes and see beyond what’s against you? What would become of our panic filled moments if we had our eyes opened to see? What would our decisions look like if we prayed like Elisha and ask God to open our eyes to His power? The next time you face a circumstance causing panic in your life, I want you to remember that you should not be afraid because you are favored and those who are with you are more than those who aren’t. Let’s pray God opens our eyes to His power in our times of panic.
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