2 Kings 7
They sat at the city gate, four men wrapped in rags, their skin marked by affliction, their bodies worn by exile. Cast out, counted as nothing, left to wither while Samaria starved within its walls. Death hemmed them in on every side—within the city, famine; without, the enemy.
And yet, in that darkest hour, when despair coiled tight around the throats of men, when hunger gnawed at bone and spirit alike, they did not give themselves to the slow decay of waiting.
They asked the question that changed everything.
“Why sit we here until we die?”
It was not a question of weakness, but of reckoning. A question that demanded courage, a question that pulled them up from the dust and drove them forward.
To stay was certain death. To move—perhaps death still, but perhaps life. And life, even by the thinnest thread, was worth reaching for.
So they rose, staggering toward the Syrian camp, toward the enemy’s camp—toward the only path left to them. Every step must have felt like a fool’s errand, every breath a battle against fear, every ragged inch forward a test of will.
But while they moved, God moved.
Heaven stirred at the shuffle of their weary feet, and what was weakness in man became thunder in the ears of the enemy. The sound of an army, a host unseen, a terror unshakable. The Syrians fled in the night, their voices swallowed by panic, their swords abandoned mid-stride.
And when the lepers reached the camp, they found not death, but abundance.
Gold glinting in the moonlight. Food enough to fill every hollow in their bodies. Garments rich and whole. The spoils of a battle they had not fought, a victory they had not earned—except by moving.
Except by refusing to sit and die.
They saw it first. The victory. The provision. The outstretched hand of God.
Because they chose to rise.
Because they chose to move.
Because they refused to let their condition, their suffering, their isolation dictate whether they lived.
And now, what of you?
What of your gate, your famine, your fear? What of the voices that tell you to sit in your suffering, to waste away in the shadows, to accept the slow death of hopelessness?
Will you let your condition define you?
Or will you rise?
Will you step forward even when your feet feel weak, even when you cannot see the path, even when the enemy looms large before you?
Because if you move, if you push through the ache, if you dare to believe that there is life beyond your brokenness, you just might find that God has already fought for you.
That what you feared was never waiting to destroy you—only to be given into your hands.
That the victory is already won.
And you will see it first.
If only you will rise.
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