Judges 8:18-9:21
Luke 23:44-24:12
Psalm 99:1-9
Proverbs 14:9-10
I felt bad for Gideon today. Called and empowered by God to do His will, to save Israel from its enemies, he returns victorious and they want to crown him king, which he refuses, insisting instead that they submit to the Lord. so what happens? Instead he asks for a tiny share of the plunder, and makes it into an ephod...which becomes a cause for Israel to sin, when they worship the ephod of Gideon rather than the Lord that carried Gideon to victory. And not only does Israel sin, but so does his son - who turns and murders his seventy brothers. Gideon was a good man...why did these tragedies happen - to the nation he served, to the sons he bore?
In the New Testament reading, we come to the culmination of our Lord's suffering. It is now three in the afternoon, and the sun has stopped shining. Jesus cries out in a loud voice, and gives up His spirit. In earthly eyes, this too was a good man. He spent His life healing the sick, raising the dead, preaching good things. Why did Have to die, and in such terrible fashion? We get the answer 3 days later, when women come to His tomb and find that He has risen. No one could have seen that answer coming.
I don't have the answer to Gideon's story. Nor do I have the answer to so many of the troubles and worries I face in my life. But there have been many times when God has taken my worry and suffering and given me an answer I would never have seen coming (ask me about the lost Jakarta house, or how the heartbreak of rejection by the one business school I'd aspired to attend all my life turned out). It's just that more often I am like Peter - I look in, see the strips of linen, and walk away wondering what had happened. I just wish I was as quick a study as Mary Magdalene and the other women who saw the answer they could not have expected, and believed.
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