Sometimes we make our lives and our relationship with God more difficult than it has to be. This idea is illustrated perfectly in Jesus’ words in the Gospel, “No prophet is accepted in his own native place.” Sometimes we only hear what we want to hear or we think what we need to do must be more complicated. Naaman from the first reading from Kings goes to the prophet Elisha, looking for a cure for leprosy. Elisha gives him a simple answer: Go and wash seven times in the River Jordan. But Naaman doesn’t buy it. He’s angry. The answer must be more complicated. It was his servants who had the answer: “My father,” they said, “if the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it? All the more now, since he said to you, ‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.”
Sometimes I seek a complicated solution, a bargain with God that will let me do what I want to do. What I have to realize is that what God wants from me is extraordinary and simple. I have to learn to be quiet so I can really hear my own heart. I pray that I can open my heart and listen, even if the answer seems simple. Let me see what is extraordinary in the every day, in the people around me. Let me believe and live these lovely, simple words from the Rev. Gregory Boyle in his book, “Tattoos on the Heart,” “ … it has been God’s joy to love you all along.”