For all the hype back in January about it being a year for clarity and focus, 2020 has turned our best-laid plans into a blur of uncertainties and cancelations. From gathering with friends to our daily work, from finances to graduations, from health concerns to travel plans to sporting events to shortages of items we’ve always taken for granted, who among us has not encountered massive disruptions over the past five months? 

There’s a story in 2 Kings 6 that can guide our praying in the midst of the global pandemic. Things aren’t going too well for Ben Hadad II, King of Syria. Israel is no match for his massive armies. Still, somehow, they keep getting the upper hand, anticipating his every move, predicting his troop movements, second-guessing his attack plans. He suspects a traitor in his camp, but a servant tells the king of a prophet named Elisha who is informing the Hebrews of “the words that you speak in your bedroom.” Comically, Ben Hadad sends a huge army with soldiers and horses and chariots to capture the man. They invade at night, lest this little bald-headed prophet should somehow prevail. When Elisha’s young servant goes out early the next morning to collect the Dothan Daily News from the end of the driveway, he is terrified to see a multitude of armed soldiers surrounding the city. The servant cries out to Elisha that the two of them are seriously outnumbered, but the old man responds: “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” The servant must have thought poor Elisha’s eyes were going out on him and his mind was not far behind. The prophet prays that the Lord would “open his eyes that he may see.” And in that moment the younger man catches a glimpse of things normally unseen by earthly eyes. Beyond the Syrian army, the mountain is filled with multiplied angelic forces and chariots of fire.

There are moments when God pulls back the curtain to bring perspective and hope and confidence. Let’s pray that God will allow us to see something of the greater picture. He works in ways we miss unless our spiritual eyes are opened to see beyond the pandemic. 

Gary