the angel of the LORD appeared to him and said,
“The LORD is with you, O champion!”
The LORD sees us differently than we see ourselves.
My family is the lowliest in Manasseh,
and I am the most insignificant in my father’s house.”
We rank ourselves based on all of these transient earthly factors. We rank ourselves rather like incipient materialists. We assess all of the factors and events in the chain of causality that make us who we are. Whether we have an unduly high or low regard for ourselves this is still the problem. Our self-image doesn't allow for the possibility of anything from the outside this world's horizon affecting us. Yet we are more than genetics. We are more than a history of poor choices. We are more than imperfect relationships. Or at least, we can be.
“I shall be with you,” the LORD said to him,
“and you will cut down Midian to the last man.”
We certainly don't have it in us to be the champion of the LORD. There is no way for us to rearrange the material of this broken world to form such a champion. Yet, if the LORD is with us we will be that champion. We must hear him as he says, "[i]t is I who send you.” His sending is also an empowering. The angel first says that the "LORD is with you" and only after does he address Gideon as "champion." And even so Gideon has more to learn about relying on the LORD's strength and not his own.
Jesus brings the point home in his response to his disciples:
“For men this is impossible,
but for God all things are possible.”
Just like Gideon, we must all recognize the insufficiency of our own riches. But even in recognizing this we must not be defined by it. Precisely because we don't have to do it on our own we can be the champions the LORD is calling us to be.
I will hear what God proclaims;
the LORD–for he proclaims peace
To his people, and to his faithful ones,
and to those who put in him their hope.
Let us hear God proclaiming peace.
The LORD himself will give his benefits;
our land shall yield its increase.
It is a gift he gives. But it is not a gift he gives in an external way, outside of us. Peace begins with us, as the song goes. His presence in us, who depend utterly on him, allows us to be the champions of peace that he calls us to be.
It is precisely in this that we find the blessings which he wants to pour out on us.
And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters
or father or mother or children or lands
for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more,
and will inherit eternal life.
Relying on our own strength we cannot break free from the gravity that pulls us down. We can't escape the entropy of this materialist clock that is winding down. Trying to be first, we will find ourselves to be last.
But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
But this is not what the LORD wants for us. We have ears, so let us hear! Let us hear him speaking peace to us:
Justice shall walk before him,
and salvation, along the way of his steps.
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