A Blessing for the Small Things

As part of my role as Barton College Chaplain and Director of Campus Ministries, I was invited to offer an invocation at yesterday’s College Assembly, where our ongoing response to the coronavirus was a major topic of discussion. Here is what I shared with our faculty, staff, and administration:

There is a story from the Jewish scriptures about a powerful general called Naaman. Naaman was used to being in charge. He was kind of a big deal. But he had this skin disease he couldn’t get rid of, and it really bothered him. So he visited the prophet Elisha, who told him that the way for him to be cured was to go and wash himself in the Jordan River.

Have any of you ever been to the Jordan River? I have. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s no Nile. It’s really more like a creek. So Naaman got upset that he, kind of a big deal that he was, had come all this way to visit with this prophet only to be told to wash in a dinky river.

But Naaman had this administrative assistant who said to him, “Hey, if the prophet had told you that you had to wrestle an alligator barehanded, you would have done it, right?” This is a bit of a paraphrase, you understand. “So if you would do this really big thing, why not just go and do the small thing of washing in the river?” So Naaman listened to his administrative assistant, which is always a good idea, and took a bath in the river, and was healed. Happy ending.

I tell you this story for two reasons. First: wash your hands. For goodness sakes, literally. Soap, water, vigorous scrubbing, 20 seconds. That’s the length of either the Doxology or of the chorus to Toto’s “Africa,” whichever you prefer. It’s in the Bible. Not Toto’s Africa, but definitely the hand washing thing.

And secondly, it’s often not the big, heroic things in life, but rather the small things, suggested by those who are at times overlooked, that make a real difference in healing and wholeness. We are at times, like Naaman, waiting for the big thing, the magical fix, when it’s the simple things — the decision to be kind, the decision to tell the truth, the decision to be vulnerable, to admit a need for help, to stop and to care — that we need.

So hear now this blessing of Naaman assistant:

“May you be blessed with the miracles present in the small things. May you be blessed with attention to the overlooked voices. May you know yourself healed and washed cleaned by God. And may you wash your hands and say your prayers, ‘cuz Jesus and germs are everywhere.”

Amen.