Someone once said, “Don’t raise the bridge, instead lower the river.” At times there are alternatives to problems which we overlook. When the prophet Elisha informed the king of Samaria that in just 24 hours the starving people in his city would have more than enough to eat, the king’s right-hand man dismissed it as absurd. “If the LORD would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?” Elisha said, “Watch and you’ll see it with your own eyes — but you won’t eat a bite of it.”
Have you been praying that God will supply a particular need and been looking up to see when it will arrive? The king’s right-hand man thought that was the only way it could happen, and scorned the possibility. When the promised food arrived it was not a falling coconut or a bunch of bananas falling from the sky that killed him — it was starving citizens that trod him underfoot when he got between them and an invite to “ALL YOU CAN EAT!”
Not that God couldn’t drop things into our laps; after all, He can do anything. He fed the children of Israel twice a day for six days a week for forty years! It was 24/6 not 24/7, but twice as much manna fell on Fridays, so it amounted to the same thing.
Having prophesied plenty, the prophet retired from the scene. How God would fulfill the prophecy was not his business; he was just the messenger.
Meantime, outside the locked city gate four lepers who know nothing of the prophecy consider their options. “Why sit here until we die?” Option #1: “If we enter the city there’s nothing there to eat so we’ll die.” Option #2: “If we just sit here and do nothing, we’ll die.” Option #3: “If we go out to the Syrians and they don’t kill us, we will live”; and Option #4: “If they kill us, well, we’re starving to death anyway, so what have we got to lose?”
These four were not men of faith, nor even optimists — they were fatalistic about the possibility of survival. But they had sense enough to know that Option #3 was the only one that held any hope. So they got to their feet and walked out into the twilight and into the enemy camp. What did they have to lose?
Back in the city of Samaria, things were not looking good. We don’t know if the people knew of the prophecy, but starvation can end in permanent sleep, so most people probably prayed that God would help them make it through the night and into the next morning. Little did they know that as the four lepers walked out in the twilight, God had set the sound of their footsteps on quad-stereo and turned the speakers up to full blast!
Just when the well-fed Syrians were settling down to sleep. Well, you know the story: the lepers arrived at the camp, found the Syrians had fled, and saw there was food galore! But soon the four got to thinking about what would happen when the sun came up and everyone in the city saw them alone with all the food. The instinct for self-preservation that had enabled them to survive outside the city told them that now might be a good time to share their discovery.
You know how bureaucrats are: the city fathers thought the news was too good to be true and counselled caution. But slow starvation and the hopeless situation forced a decision: “Well, maybe we could at least take a look…” Maybe the sight of four well-dressed and well-fed lepers at the gate had something to do with their decision.
Picture the crush when the gate of the city was opened. One man experienced it. The king had appointed his right-hand man to control the crowd, but when he got in the way of the stampeding citizens, they trod him underfoot. And so it was that Elisha’s two prophecies came to pass: one that said that within 24 hours food would be cheap in the city; and one that said the king’s right-hand man who had scoffed would see it but wouldn’t get a bite.
God doesn’t open windows in the sky and pour out all the good things we’d like, carte blanche. He could, but He doesn’t. He hears the prayers that ascend to Him vertically and answers them horizontally. And he can work through social rejects out there in the Twilight Zone.
Yes, there are times when he inspires a prophet to speak on the horizontal (earthly) level, so that we can open doors of opportunity and go out and get what He has provided. The door may be a figurative one, such as a more open attitude. “Oh, that you would tear the heavens, that you would come down…” prayed the prophet Isaiah, and then graphically described the effects of God’s intervention in human affairs (Isaiah 64:1-3). This is the “vertical” view. But in verse 4, the prophet declares: “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither has the eye seen, O God, beside you, what he has prepared for them that wait for him.”
Hang on, doesn’t this sound familiar? Yes indeed! The Apostle Paul quotes this verse in 1 Corinthians 2:9, before going on to write, “But God has revealed them to us by his Spirit…” God did not “tear the heavens” and come down, but came to us on the horizontal level in the person of Jesus. Moreover, after his ascension into heaven, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit down to where we live on the horizontal level.
We worship and pray vertically, and then we minister on the horizontal, human level. We don’t ask God to do for us what Jesus has told us to do in his name — his authority. Why would we look for “windows” to open in heaven when God has opened for us so many “doors” (opportunities) on earth?
Are you looking for God to open a window of supply in the sky? What if God provided a door of opportunity in your community? There are more people ‘out there’ than your church can handle, and what if some people inside the church building are trying to get you to believe it? Might it be the fulfillment of all those persistent prayers and promising prophecies? Why starve inside a dying church when out there in the community are more people than your church building can seat?
As Clark Taylor used to say, “You’ll never know till you have a go!”