Answering
the Call
“Then
the Lord turned to Gideon and said, 'Go in this might of yours and
deliver Israel from the hand of Midian: I hereby commission you.'”
Judges
6:11-24
You
may remember Gideon—not the one who puts Bibles in hotel rooms, but
the one from the Old Testament book of Judges. He was a young man
from the tribe of Manasseh. At the time, the Hebrew people were being
tormented by the Midianites. The people of Israel did all the work of
gleaning and threshing, harvesting the olives, pressing the grapes,
and then this band of thugs from Midian would ride in and take it all
away. Anyone who tried to stop them died for their trouble. This had
gone on for seven years and the Hebrew people were at their wits end.
Like
so many others God called upon, Gideon was an absolute coward. In
fact, the angel who came to deliver the message found him hiding in a
wine press for fear of the Midianites. When he was commissioned by
God to lead his people out of this terrible situation, he basically
said, “You've got to be kidding!” And even when the angel
addressed his as a “mighty warrior” he wasn't buying it. There
follows a rather comedic give-and-take in which the angel tells
Gideon that the Lord is with him, and his response is, “Oh, yeah—if
the Lord is with us, then why are all these bad things happening to
us?” In other words, if this is what it means to have God on our
side, then maybe we'd be better off without God! But the angel does
not budge. He tells Gideon to go in his might and deliver his people,
at which point Gideon begins the but-but phase of negotiations.
“But..but..I'm small, I'm weak, there are others who could do a
much better job. What do I know..I'm a nobody...” and so forth, and
so on. You'd think these poor folks would have learned by now that
God is not calling for volunteers.
Well,
Gideon, being stubborn and terrified, requires a sign. I have an
image of Wiley Coyote detonating a stick of dynamite and blowing up
himself instead of the Road Runner. I can almost hear the angel
chuckling under his breath—“Okay, you want a sign, I'll give you
a sign...boom!” But he didn't. Instead, he caused the whole meal
that Gideon prepared for him to go up in smoke. Don't ask me why that
worked, but it did. Gideon fell on his knees and begged the Lord to
help him, and was promised that if he did God's bidding, he would not
die for his efforts. That gave him the courage he needed to do-in the
unholy Midianites in that disastrous way that only occurs in the Old
Testament.
I
guess I like Gideon because he's so much like me—he's a coward, and
he doesn't like to be called upon to do anyone's bidding much less
the Almighty's. Just let me stay in my little hobbit-hole and get on
with my life. But no, God doesn't take no for an answer. God expects
all of us to carry out God's work in the world, no matter how limited
or how cowardly we may be. So let me ask you this...How have you
answered God's call?
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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