Daily Devotional

“And the Syrians had gone out on raids and had brought back captive a young girl from the land of Israel. She waited on Naaman’s wife” (2 Kings 5:2). 

Dubbed a “crime of the century,” the kidnapping of Charles August Lindbergh, Jr. was big news in March 1932. The twenty-month-old child was the son of famous American aviator Charles Lindbergh. 

The baby was snatched from his crib by Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who tried to negotiate a ransom. When that failed, the child’s remains were found along a roadside by a passing truck driver. Hauptmann was cap- tured, convicted, and executed on April 3, 1936. 

Kidnapping of children by a stranger is a nightmare parents often worry about. Actually, most kidnappings are not of this sort. In a 2001 study, the U.S. government noted over 800,000 cases of missing persons. About 50,000 of these were classified as younger than eighteen. Nearly 90 percent of missing children have simply misunderstood directions or miscommunicated their plans, are lost, or have run away from home. Nine percent are kidnapped by a family member in a custody dispute. Three percent are abducted by non-family members, usually during a crime and the kidnapper is someone the child knows. Only about 100 (a fraction of 1 percent) are kidnapped in the stereotypical way by strangers. 

During the time of Elisha, there were frequent skirmishes between Israel and Syria. During one raid, a young Israelite girl was kidnapped and made a servant for a Syrian officer’s wife. The girl was carried far from her home into a foreign land and made a slave. She must have felt fearful, lonely, and forsaken by God. Despite such difficulties, she became a powerful witness when she told Captain Naaman’s wife that God could heal her husband of leprosy. 

We would understand if she had lived in silence, afraid to speak up on behalf of her faith. But this courageous girl is an encouragement to us to be faithful to the Lord—even in the most daunting circumstances. 

O Lord, may my excuses for not speaking up for You be laid in the dust. May I bravely say a word for You today when I am prompted by the Spirit.