#GodisWithMe

Yesterday was Independence Day here in Nicaragua, a day the whole country takes time to fully celebrate.  Everyone has Monday and Tuesday off of work and school, providing a great opportunity to take part in the celebrations and spend time with family and friends.  Hundreds upon hundreds of people lined the streets as parades wandered through town all throughout the weekend.  These parades featured every school in the city with school children walking and performing in marching bands.  The deep rhythms of the drums and the loud bangs of fireworks could be heard everywhere.  As the saying goes, the louder things are the happier it is!

On a different note, I have recently joined a women’s Bible study and I have to share with you what a blessing it has become for me during my week.  I was a bit dubious at first, considering I’d be the youngest participant by quite a bit, but I decided to jump in feet first and see where it would take me.  Well, I didn’t quite expect to be so surprised, that’s for sure!  The reason: we are studying Gideon.  You know, the guy who challenged God with his whole fleece thing and got away with it.  And then there was something about some guys lapping up water out of a river and then only some being chosen to fight against a big army and win by tricking the bad guys into thinking they were goners.  Or something like that.  Basically, my idea of Gideon going into this was that he was one lucky (and recklessly bold) guy who valiantly saved his people. 

Come to find out, he wasn’t the valiant warrior type.  Not at first anyway.

In Judges 6, we first meet Gideon while he is threshing wheat.  In a winepress.  Which is kind of like a cave.  Ok, so Gideon was in hiding from some bad guys who were picking on Israel in the hopes they wouldn’t steal his food.  But the angle of the Lord nevertheless chooses to visit with this man: “… The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” (vs. 6)  Um, did I miss something?  Isn’t the angel of the Lord talking to Gideon, a lowly man (he says this himself in verse 12) who is acting a bit cowardly right at the moment, hiding in his bat cave?  I wonder how Gideon reacted.  Did he cough in surprise?  Snort in derision?  Scoff at the preposterous nature of it?  Stare in stunned silence?  Well, we don’t know how he reacted physically but we do know he doesn’t say anything.  He sort of ignores it and then goes on to complain to this mighty angel that God couldn’t be with them if all this bad stuff was happening.  Take that, angel of God.  What do you have to say for yourself?

If we keep reading, we see that Gideon gets a quick lesson in just how wrong he is.  God had never abandoned Israel—they had abandoned God. 

I have to say, I’m a bit jealous of Gideon.  Not that I necessarily want to be oppressed by enemies or thresh wheat in a windless cave or be chosen to lead an army into battle or anything, but it would be nice to hear from an angel’s mouth that God is with me.  That would be sure to calm my doubting mind.  But, even if I don’t hear those words like Gideon did, I have faith that the truth of them still rings true today.  God is with me, through the power of Jesus’ sacrifice and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28: 20).  I experience God in a whole different way than Gideon did.  I wonder if he’d be jealous of me…

At the end of each lesson, we are given the opportunity to create hashtag statements of things we learned.  A hashtag (popularly used on social media outlets like Twitter) is simply a word or group of words that express something.  Like #KelseyRocks or #VivaNicaragua or #WaylandCRC.  So, I’d like to recap today with a few hashtags of my own of things I learned from Gideon:

#GodIsWithMe

#GodUsestheOrdinary

#BeAwareofGod’sVoice

#LessonsfromGideon

#StayTuned!!