The Old
Testament story of Gideon is my story; probably all of us can relate to this
one (Judges 6:11-24). I love the words
of the angel of the Lord to Gideon while he was hard at work grinding wheat one
day. “The Lord is with
you, O champion!” I can imagine this happening to me. My response would be similar to Gideon’s
response. “What do you mean, “Champion?” I’m just stuck here at work that never makes
a difference, except to keep me and my family fed. There must be more to life if I’m supposed to
be a champion.”
The Lord has
done wonderful things for me, that’s true, but now what? I’m just not one of the movers and shakers in
the world. But the Lord has an answer to
our doubts just as with Gideon’s doubts.
The Lord says, “Go with the strength you have [and do what needs to be done], because
I am sending you.” And we like Gideon say, “I don’t have much
strength, I’m really pretty insignificant.”
And the Lord says, “I’ll be with you.”
And we say, again like Gideon, “OK, but give me a sign.” And the Lord does.
My
reflections today are about the signs that the Lord is with us. We’ll see them if we trust in God. What’s important here is that God is with us,
not that we get stronger. It’s about
God’s strength and not ours. We don’t
get very far if we ask for strength to go it alone to do what we want to
do. We all know that. But we’re “champions” if we go with God where
God needs us to go. When we hear what
God wants us to do, miracles will happen.
We will see the signs. We will be
champions! Accompanying our faithfulness
and hopefulness will be truth and justice, springing out of
the earth and down from heaven. It’s all there if we
look for it (Psalm 85:9-14).
There’s more! We can inherit eternal life. But we can’t do that by ourselves
either. Jesus reminds us that it’s
impossible on our own, only with God (Matthew 19:23-30). Still, I can’t help but think that trusting
in God to deliver is only half of the human story. It’s what we want God to deliver that is the
problem. Most of us want something other
than what God promises to provide us. We
want earthly riches, power, and recognition of it all more than we want peace
and justice and eternal life. We really
think we can enjoy wealth and power more than we can peace and justice. Jesus understood that.
So the other
half of the human story is about our desiring to follow Jesus. But that too isn’t all up to us; Jesus
reminds us that it’s impossible for our desires to be made perfect without
God. For the sake of the name of Jesus
we do our best, but we must rely on God to be with us to stay on track. So today, and every day, we can stop to pray
at work in gratitude for the Lord’s presence.
Just listen for the angel saying, “The Lord is with you, O
champion!” Then we can get our priorities straight and
get back to work; that is, God’s work.
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