Elisha: Ordinary meets Extraordinary

Do you ever feel ordinary? I was talking to someone at church Sunday morning who said she just felt invisible and so ordinary. She felt like nothing she had done recently was "good enough" or noticed. She thought that no matter how nice she was to others it just didn't seem to matter much. She was convinced she was in this rut of just go, go, go and do, do, do for others and no one even noticed or bothered to say thank you. What she described was a feeling of being quite ordinary or maybe even less than ordinary. She felt ordinarily invisible. But ... watch and think about the above video. Almost everyone in the Bible that God uses to accomplish extraordinary things (that I can think of anyways) is pretty ordinary person. Perhaps many of them even felt invisibly ordinary from time to time! So, to my Sunday morning friend, I say take comfort in the invisible ordinary and remember that God is at work and is using your gifts and beautiful spirit each day in ways you may not even be aware! With this in mind and knowing that I wanted to talk about Elisha in my EYC devotion Sunday night, I was reminded as I read through 2 Kings just of ordinary Elisha was! Before being called to be a prophet (one who speaks for God), Elisha was a REALLY, REALLY normal guy. In fact, when Elijah calls him to be a prophet (one who spoke for God) Elisha was literally in the fields, plowing his land. Elijah comes up and puts his cloak on Elisha. This was a symbolic act that Elisha was to follow his now mentor Elijah. Elisha immediately goes and tells his family what has happened and then kills all the cattle he was using to plow the land and uses the equipment / plow as firewood to cook the cattle. This guy was either ridiculously stupid or had a ridiculous faith. I mean that’s commitment, right? At this point there was no turning back for Elisha; this was no ordinary commitment, right? If he decided he didn’t like Elijah or didn’t want to be a prophet, there was no turning back because he just destroyed everything that he used for his livelihood! He was ALL in! So God uses this ordinary guy, Elisha, to accomplish some pretty extraordinary things! This invisibly ordinary guy goes on to get messages from God, performs miracles for God, and tries to get the people of Israel to follow God! When you are an ordinary guy with a ridiculous faith, crazy things can happen! And, how timely, Elisha's and the stories surrounding him in 2 Kings really are perfect for this time of year ... Halloween-like with some gory, nasty, horribly scary details! If you know me, you know I don’t do scary … no rollercoaster, no dark houses, no scary movies! This stuff is scary ... and I could never make this up! Check out all the action in the beginning of 2 Kings! Some of the extraordinary things God worked through Elisha: *Not really gory but really cool is the story of when Elisha saves and entire town and people! Jericho's water source had become polluted and was killing the people and harming the land! Elisha prayed to God, threw some salt into the spring / water source and God fixes things! An entire people saved. Extraordinary. *The next story we hear about Elisha is pretty gory! He was traveling to a town and a massive group of young men came up and were picking on him! The called him baldy (an insult to those who had leprosy) and told him to go away. They were probably getting ready to beat Elisha and there were probably lots of them! Elisha tells them to stop and curses them by probably saying something like "You seriously need to stop, I can't believe how ridiculous you guys are being! Darn you!" All of a sudden two bears come out of the woods and maul the boys, killing 42 of them! Extraordinary. *Another not so gory but amazingly wild story about God working through Elisha is when Elisha is able to help a poor widow! Her husband had died and left a great debt and this widow had no way to pay it. She came to Elisha for help. He sent her away with her only possession, a bottle of olive oil, and told her to go pour it in jugs. She was miraculously able to fill many, many jars which she could sell to repay the debt. Extraordinary. *Still another wickedly weird story involves Elisha and a rich woman in a town that Elisha frequented. This woman frequently fed Elisha and liked him so much that she built a room on her home just for Elisha. The rich woman did not have a son. Elisha strikes a deal (so to speak) with God and the woman becomes pregnant with a son. When this son is an older child, he is out working in the field and gets a bad headache. He dies and the rich woman is devastated that her only son, this gift from God is now dead. She goes and gets Elisha and Elisha lays on him twice; Scripture says the son sneezes 7 times, and comes back to life. Extraordinary. *There was another somewhat scary time when some peeps were having a feast. They had used poisonous herbs and didn't realize it! Elisah pours some flour in and God is able to make the stew edible for 100 people. Extraordinary. *Elisha is able to lead a great army leader (Naaman) to have his leprosy healed. When Naaman comes to Elisha with this gross skin disease and asks to be healed, Elisha tells Naaman to go and wash in the Jordan river 7 times. Naaman thinks this is a ridiculous action to perform and seems to ordinary to heal him. After some convincing by his fellow army mates, he does it and completely healed. Naaman comes to believe in God and have a devout faith because of this! Extraordinary. *There is another story of Elisha that isn't horrifyingly gross but is one of those you had to see it to believe it types of stories! There is a group cutting trees near the rive and an ax head flies off into the river, sinking to the bottom as an ax head would do! Turns out the ax was borrowed and feeling terrible about what happened, the person using the ax asks Elisha for help. Elish is able to make the ax head float. Really extraordinary. *Then there is the disgustingly gory story of Jehu and Jezebel. Jehu had been anointed by Elisha and his team of prophets to be the next king. Jehu then goes on a killing / avenging spree! This killing spree includes pushing Jezebel out of a window in the palace to her death. Jehu tramples her dead body with his horse. Later he sends some servants to go and bury her and all they find is her skull, hands, and feet as dogs had eaten the rest of her. All of the had been previously prophesized that it would happen! Extraordinary. Jehu's killing spree continues to the 70 sons of Ahab living in Samaria. He had them beheaded and their heads placed in baskets and put on display at the city gate. *The final story that we read about Elisha is pretty freaky. Elisha has died in a very ordinary way ... he got sick. After he has been placed in his grave, there is another man being buried. The group burying him gets spooked by a group they think are coming to attack them and they carelessly throw the man's body into Elisha's grave. When the man's body touches Elisha's he is revived and jumps to his feet. Extraordinary. What we can learn from Elisha's ordinary life meeting an extraordinary God is that maybe ordinary is just what we need to be. Maybe invisible is just what we need to be. God can use that. God can make extraordinary things happen. In other words, we can model ourselves after Elisha! Elisha got a call from God, stepped out in a completely ridiculous (in a good way) faith, acted on God's word to him and extraordinary things happened. Our challenge is to take a step back and take inventory of the extraordinary moments that come your way through God's call to you. Now, I don’t know what you God is calling you to do from your ordinary teenage life … maybe it is simply to sit with someone who is alone at lunch or to stop and help someone who is being bullied. Perhaps God is calling you to stop being the bully. Maybe God is calling you to leadership in a way that’s uncomfortable for you on the football field or court or maybe at your dinner table with your family. Maybe the extraorindary act your being called to through your ordinary life is to just learn the name of the homeless guy standing on the corner as you bring him some food. Or maybe it involves a situation with your friends. The challenge is to have a ridiculous faith even when you just feel ordinary and know that extraordinary things will happen if you do.