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The Lord Is With You


The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”
         “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.” (Judges 6:11-13)            

            Someone on one of my social media outlets asked a question today about what three characteristics I’m building or showing (or some such) during this crisis. I said that I would like to be able to say that I’m demonstrating love, faith, and courage, or maybe love, faith, and curiosity. Instead, I’m probably showing pride, frustration, and impatience. This passage came to mind. In my imagination, to show love, faith, courage, or curiosity would require that what I am doing be taken up a couple levels of magnitude. It would have to be like one of those high intensity flashlights they advertise, not a match that looks about ready to burn out. 
         Granted, my complaint isn’t “but if the Lord is with us,” it’s more “if these characteristics were with  me,” but the idea is the same. If God were with me, my love, faith, and courage would be far greater, and my pride, frustration, and impatience would be microscopic. If God were with you, chances are good that you think there are things that would be more true of you, or less. 
          Put bluntly, we tend to have romantic (or perhaps juvenile) ideas about what some of these things look like. But if we’re like Gideon, saying “What do you mean, God’s with us…?” could it also be that the angels see us as mighty warriors, even if we don’t?

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