Messengers and the Message

My postings may become a little sparse in the next few weeks. Not that I'm a heavy, daily poster anyway. Next week is retreat week, a week I am looking forward to because of the silence. In the meantime, I am caught up in the work of preparing for ordination in May. Practicing rites and the Mass seem to be taking up a lot of my free time. It's also the busy season at the diocesan catechesis office where I work. Then there are the projects at home that...well, it's a little crazy right now.

1 Kings today is the story of the Lord's cure of Namman through the prophet Elisha. As happens a lot, I tend to continue to read past the verses used in the lectionary today.

What struck me is Elisha's denial of a gift for the work he did, simply because he said it was not him who cured Namman, but the Lord. Interesting. In our human weakness, we tend to make a hero of the messenger and not the One who sent the message. Inevitably, this leads to disappointment, because the messenger is flawed just as we are. The biggest struggle we have as either the messenger or the listener to the messenger is to remember it is the work of the Lord through us, and not the individual action of any one of us. Something we all need to recall from time to time.