Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 150 · May 30
Round About Elisha
“And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.”
Before dawn, horses and chariots stand all the way around a small hill town called Dothan. It is the grey hour, and nobody inside the walls is properly awake yet.
The whole army is there for one man. Elisha has been warning the king of Israel where the Syrian raiding parties will camp, and he does it so accurately that the king of Syria gathers his servants to find the traitor among them. One of them tells him there is no traitor: Elisha the prophet "telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber." So the king sends "horses, and chariots, and a great host" by night to arrest one prophet. Early in the morning Elisha's servant goes outside, sees the ring of soldiers, and says the sensible thing: "Alas, my master! how shall we do?"
Elisha answers, "Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." Then he prays, and he does not ask for the army to be sent away. He asks for the young man's eyes: "LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see." Then comes the detail that carries the story: "the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha." Round about Elisha, and the servant was standing right beside him, inside that ring of fire the whole time he was afraid. A psalm makes it a standing promise: "The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them." Nothing new arrived on that hill. What the young man was given was the sight of what was already there.
Notice too that the chariots of fire never charge. The Syrians are struck blind and led into Samaria, and there Elisha tells the king to "set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master." After that, "the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel." So pray Elisha's prayer for one person you can name who is standing where that servant stood. Ask God to open their eyes to see that He is already around them, and trust that He is around you too.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 150 is I Change Not (Malachi 3:6).