Naaman was a great captain in the Syrian army. He was also a leper. When he learned from his wife's handmaid that there was a prophet among the Hebrews that could heal him, he presented himself to the king with all kinds of riches and pleaded to be healed. Naaman perhaps assumed that a prophet mighty enough to cure him would surely be in a place of honor at the king’s court. Neither the king nor all his court could help him, but Elisha heard what happened and bid Naaman to leave behind the fancy court and come to his humble abode. When Naaman arrived, Elisha would not come out to meet him but sent his servant to deliver a simple message - “Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?” (2 Kings 5:10-13). When we strive to repent and seek forgiveness for our sins, like Naaman, we want to believe there is some great thing that we must do to be healed and cleansed. Often, the pain we endure from our guilty conscience looms huge in our minds and in our hearts. It seems like we must do something equally huge to set things right. If we had to personally atone for our sins and set things right for all of the harm we caused, it would require a huge effort, one far beyond our meager capabilities. But thanks to our Savior Jesus Christ, our part is incredibly, almost infuriatingly small. Almost, it seems, beneath us. How can it be? How can we simply wash and be clean, especially after all that we have done? It may not be right and it may not be fair and it certainly doesn't make any kind of sense, but nevertheless, that is all that we must do. Satan wants us to believe that we must prolong our suffering. He tries to get us to think that the cleansing and healing power of the Atonement is only open to us after we have paid what we have owed and sweat our own drops of blood. Satan just wants us to be miserable and he's not picky how that happens. If he can get us to sin and become miserable in that way, great. If he can get us to suffer merely for having sinned and stopped but delaying repentance so that we can hold onto our guilt and beat ourselves up over and over, even better! But what does Christ want? He just wants us to wash ourselves in His blood so that we can be clean. He already spilled every drop for every one of our sins before we were even born. Our own blood isn't getting us any cleaner, so we need to stop beating ourselves bloody because it's only getting us farther and farther from becoming clean. I hope we can listen to the servants of Naaman and embrace the simplicity and the smallness of our part and just wash and be clean.
