Encountering God: "...only if..."

II Kings 5:2: The Syrians, on one of their raids, had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel and she worked in the service of Naaman’s wife.  She said to her mistress, “If only my master would go to see the prophet who is in Samaria.  He would cure him of leprosy.”

We return to the beginning of the narrative concerning Naaman to visit again these words spoken by a little Jewish girl - - “If only….” 
The profundity of these words are understood best with the realization of who she is, and who Naaman was.  Let us begin with Naaman.  He was the military and political leader who assaulted Israel.  He was a vicious – terrible man – an evil man who committed great atrocities against the people of God.  He was certainly a man who deserved not a single good thing from God ,  rather he was a man who deserved punishment, suffering, death.  It seems right and just that such a man should contract leprosy and slowly suffer the indignities of that disease until finally and painfully, he is dead.

And then there is the girl, a slave girl.  She is a girl that likely saw the brutal attack on her people and the murder of her family.  She is a girl that suffered the fate of becoming a slave to the very monster who was responsible for all that was inflicted upon her.   It would have made more psychological sense to me if upon hearing and seeing the effects of Leprosy upon this ogre, that she would have said not “only if….” but “let him suffer and die.” 

The man who deserved nothing but her vitriol is the object of her compassion.  She loves him, she loves her enemy!  And oh how precious, and beautiful - - -  and - like my Jesus she is – because when I was a flagrant, murderous sinner – when I was the great enemy of the LORD – Jesus loved me!  Had this little girl not loved Naaman, none of the narrative of his saving encounter with God would never have happened.  Had Jesus not loved you and I sinful enemies of God, the narrative of our saving encounter with God, likewise, would not have happened.  Though I was an enemy of God – still – Jesus loved me!

As Naaman was a representative of a sinful humanity, receiving grace and forgiveness and healing by the sheer grace of GOD, so is this little slave girl is a type of Jesus – extending grace and mercy and healing to a sin stained wretch that did not deserve what he received.