1 post tagged “moses”

Yesterday’s sermon was about Gideon.  This really unassuming humble guy got up and spoke about Gideon in a way that really captured me Sunday.  Sad to say that is really unusual because if there isn’t something to go with the intellectual content I have a hard time staying tuned in.  I love Gideon; he and I go way back.  I’m always thinking I’m nobody but there is something in the back of my spirit that dreams of bigger things, bigger adventures, and even a desire for greatness.  This preacher guy with the sweet spirit talked about how God sees us the way He created us, we view ourselves very differently.  God says to Gideon “Mighty Warrior” and Gideon goes looking all over the place to see who God is talking to, because certainly it couldn’t be him.  I get that.  Moses got that.  There are others who get that.  And Gideon struggled to believe the truth about himself.  He saw the fire burn up the food he had prepared, he saw the angel vanish from the place where he had just been standing.  He saw the fleece dry with the ground wet, and again the fleece wet with the ground dry.  Over and over God confirmed Himself to Gideon while he struggled and wrestled with how these things could possibly be true.  And then God started messing with his army.  So Gideon sent the scared ones home.  Then he watched them drink from the creek and sent some more home.  I can picture his journal reading something like this:  “God, do you even like me at all?  You’re going to send me up against the biggest army I’ve ever seen and you want me to go with 300 wirey little guys?  Well, I might as well die an honorable death, that way I’ll be spoken of with respect when I’m gone.  I can be somebody in death at least.”  But God continued to patiently work to confirm His word to Gideon.  This time he got to overhear the enemy as they pronounced their own defeat.  And Gideon defeated them. 

I often wonder how it was for Gideon on the evening of that battle.  He must have sat at a fire with a weary body thinking back over his day.  He had seen a lot of death that day, and he probably had some cuts and bruises.  But three hundred men had captured an amazing victory.  Did he turn to God in absolute humility and confess his shock and amazement that the God of the universe would use him to do this?  Did he turn to the mirror and smile at himself and puff out his chest and say “I know you could do it ol' chap!”  I don’t know.  I’d love to sit down with Gideon and ask him questions about what it was like.  I wonder if he ever ceased struggling and wrestling with the truth of who God created him to be in contrast with what he believed of himself. 

Abram was a tired old man with plenty of wealth and no one to leave it to.  He was a childless man.  God gave him a son and then asked for him back.  And Abram started to obey before the angel said ‘just kidding.”  God called him Abraham.  God made his children like the stars.

Elijah was a lunatic who poured water on the wood and provoked and picked at his enemies like a mosquito asking to be swatted.  But God poured out fire from heaven and toasted everything.  Then God visited him when Elijah started hanging out on the mental ward section of the desert.  How amazing that encounter must have been.

Joseph, that annoying dreamer child, the convict with abandonment issues, became the best friend of Pharaoh and the brightest star in his family, a provider and administrator and gifted in interpreting dreams.

Moses was a judge and liberator, but he went about it his own way until that blew up in his face and he had to scurry off to the desert for fear of his life.  Then the burning bush thing rocked his world.  There is a little verse about God considering squashing him like a bug but Moses’ wife did something that saved his neck.  I wonder what that was all about.  Was Moses trying to weasel out of this gig that God had planned for him?  We humans are slow to comprehend and slow to believe.  But Moses grew into God’s design, and we know his name all these generations later. 

Rahab was a women used and abused by many men.  But God made her a haven and protector.  And the spies that she protected liberated her and her family.

Ruth was an abandoned and bereft woman, but God made her steadfast and her fidelity to Naomi brought her into God’s redemption plan.

Joshua had to be reminded to be strong and courageous repeatedly.  Was he really a weak and cowardly man that God transformed?  How many nights lingering in the Presence of God after Moses and turned in did it take till the old weak and cowardly man began to give way to the strong and courageous man?

John was the voice crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord.”  He really lost his head.

Peter was all over the charts, one day up and the next day.  One day he was recognized for listening to the Holy Spirit and another time it’s “Get thee behind me satan.”  But God called him Peter  - rock. 

Paul was the guy who held truth above all.  But he went about it his own way and had really quite the list of martyrs to his credit.  Then he “saw the light” on the road and it wasn’t a UFO.  His grip on truth transformed him into a door keeper for those people out there beyond the Jews – the Gentiles.  That’s how I (a gentile) came to be writing about him.

David was a man whose whole life was a search for the beauty and presence of God, from shepherd to king – that was his primary vision.  He faced his Goliaths and engaged his own epic battle to break through the garbage and grief of life to get to God.  And God saw a man after this heart.

I don’t get it.  I look today back over a checkered history.  I see failures and triumphs.  Times that I won big, and times that I lost even bigger.  I remember people who are not a part of my life any more because our relationship was broken.  I remember those who misused me and, sadly, those I’ve misused.  I remember times when I’ve been a good friend and times when I’ve gotten into the face of a good friend and said some really horrible things – even with good intentions.  I’m nobody.  I fight the truth of that because it isn’t what I want to be, but that doesn't change the truth.  I haven’t done anything exceptional that hasn’t already been done by others.  I have not become something amazing or assended to some great height.  But there is something within that God sees when He looks at me.  I shake my head at the silly grin on His face, wondering if He’s really thinking of someone else.  There is greatness within.  Or at least God sees it.  And I have vision for a future that can be most different and unusual.  And I have vision for what I can grow into.  My new employment, the transitions in my life this year, the paradigm shifts I find in my own mind, all this is preparation for what He’s got around the bend on my journey.  I can’t see it from here but I don’t have to.  And maybe I don’t have to even fully believe it as long as I try to listen and do as I’m told.

If He can look at

Gideon and see a warrior,

Moses and see a judge and ruler,

Peter and see a rock,

Abraham and see a father,

Rahab and see a haven,

John the Baptist and see a voice in the desert

John, the disciple that Jesus loved, and see a mystic seer,

Paul and see a doorway for the Gentiles,

David and see a man after his own heart,

Mary and see a mother,

Well, then

There is hope

Sweet hope

For me.

I think the shout still echos through history...  "For the Lord and for Gideon."  Yeah, for the Lord and for nobodies everywhere who dare to hope that God still creates something from nothing, still takes on the impossible, still sees the possibilities in someone like me.  For that kind of God.  Yeah, I'm all for that!