The Servant Who Counted

He goes out early, the way people do when something is already worrying them, and there it is: horses, chariots, an army around the whole city.

“Oh, my master, what are we to do?”

Notice what Elisha does not say. He does not tell the man he is exaggerating. He does not say the army is smaller than it looks, or that it will probably leave. The army is real and the servant counted it correctly.

What Elisha says is that the count is incomplete. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.

Then he prays, and the young man’s eyes are opened, and the hills are full.

Fear is often accurate as far as it goes. Usually the problem is not that it saw something that was not there. It is that it stopped counting too early.