2 Kings 5:13 · World English Bible
His servants came near, and spoke to him, and said, “My father, if the prophet had asked you do some great thing, wouldn’t you have done it? How much rather then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean?’ ”
Pride will trade a cure for a ceremony every time, and call the trade dignity. A belief that value must be earned by difficulty turns a simple instruction into an insult, the insult sets the state, and the state points a man back down the road with his skin still ruined.
From the Self-Help reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
SELF-HELP
Pride will trade a cure for a ceremony every time, and call the trade dignity.
A belief that value must be earned by difficulty turns a simple instruction into an insult, the insult sets the state, and the state points a man back down the road with his skin still ruined. The great thing he came prepared to do was a condition he had placed on his own healing.
The servants move his focus off what the water says about his standing and onto what refusing it costs. Washing is what turns the prophet's word into his own conviction; an argument won in his head would have changed nothing on his body. A man who waits for an assignment worthy of his rank keeps the rank and keeps the disease.
Self-Help lens
What simple instruction have I turned into an insult so I would not have to follow it?
Chop wood, carry water. Before enlightenment and after it, the work is ordinary, and anyone waiting for a grander assignment is still standing in the yard.
Handle the great while it is still small. The person who wants a worthy task often walks past the one that would have worked.
It is better to do your own plain duty imperfectly than to perform somebody else's grand one well. The size of the act was never the measure.
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Self-Help