In the Valley of the Shadow

     I was reading through Judges chapter 7 the other day and noticed a curious detail.  A detail I had read past many times before; a detail that seems almost insignificant.  If you recall, this is the story of Gideon.  In chapter 7 Gideon has gathered his army and they are looking down at the sprawling Midianite army.  God tells him to whittle his group down and in doing so Gideon ends up with only 300 men.  That night the Lord tells him to take his servant and sneak down to the enemy camp so that he can overhear the conversation between a couple of soldiers.  The conversation basically reveals that they are as scared of Gideon as Gideon is of them.  Gideon is thankful for this and - this is where the curious detail comes in- 7:15 reads:

"And so it was, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, that he worshiped. He returned to the camp of Israel, and said, "Arise, for the Lord has delivered the camp of ..."

     What I noticed was that Gideon worshipped first, and THEN he returned to the safety of his own camp.  Think about when you were a little kid and you woke up in the middle of the night and had to go to the bathroom.  And you had to walk through the dark house to get there.  The fear was almost paralyzing and you probably held it as long as you could.  And maybe, when you were done, you ran back to your bed as fast as you could, almost in a panic, and pulled the covers over your head.  Well here's a man who is such a coward that he's practically scared of his own shadow; who probably had to work up enough nerve just to sneak down and get that close to the enemy.  And rather than go back to camp, to relative safety, and then give thanks to the Lord, he stays and gives thanks where he is.  Within ear shot of the enemy.

     The 23rd Psalm talks about walking without fear even when facing death.  The Psalmist says in verse 5, "You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies..."  in the very presence of our enemies the Lord provides for us.  Something I've had to work on along my Christian walk (and I'm probably not alone) is the concept of giving thanks in all things.  Sometimes, when I'm facing a tough situation, I forget to give thanks until I'm on the other side of it.  But I've learned that whatever is going wrong, there is something going right that I can be thankful for.  Whatever I have lost, there is still plenty I have that I can be thankful for.  No matter who I am up against, I still have a God who is bigger.   And one thing I've learned along the way: the more I've remembered to give thanks in the midst of trial or tribulation, the bigger the table that God has spread before me.  

Diary of a Vegas Vacation: Entry One

             Funny how quickly your mortality can get all in your face all of a sudden.  Like when the plane you're on suddenly dips, fish tails to the right and pops back up and corrects itself slightly to the left.  Why am I on an airplane?  Let me back up just a few hours.

            My wife had been scheduled to go to an industry conference in Las Vegas for the past few months.  We had thought that it might be a nice little vacation for both us if we could swing the money for my plane ticket.  But we thought it was too much to spend, and decided against it. But as the date got closer my wife starting asking me if I was sure I shouldn’t go.  She’s a very intelligent, capable and independent women.  But somewhere inside is still the small town girl I married 15 years ago, and the looming specter of Las Vegas was making her a bit nervous.  I grew up in large, busy suburbs and actually lived in Vegas about 20 years ago.  That, and the simple fact of her husband being with her would make her more comfortable.  So on the morning of the day she had to leave I finally gave in.  It was last minute but we got a really good deal on a flight so I got packed.

            We had to take separate flights but they were to arrive about the same time.  Hers was direct, mine had a connection in Houston.  The last time I flew was Christmas and as we taxied towards the runway I finally admitted to myself what I had only suspected those ten months ago:  I don’t like flying anymore.  I used to when I was a kid.  But I didn’t have a whole lot of sense when I was a kid.  Now I could comprehend the irrational physics of moving a metal tube through the air at several hundred miles per hour 34,000 feet above the ground.   So here I am on this plane getting ready to take off and the captain informs us that there is a line of “significant” weather moving just on the outskirts of Houston.  So here I was, flying through “significant” weather on the outskirts of Houston, keeping my best poker face on for the benefit of the woman next to me who was pretending to sleep, but was actually praying more fervently than even I was, since we boarded.

            It wasn’t death itself that made me nervous.  Being dead is the easy part.  It was the prospect of how getting that way might come about that was a little nerve wracking.  But even that wasn’t my primary concern.  It was my kids.  What would they do without a father?  What if today was to be a day of freak accidents and sad, impossible-to-believe Reader’s Digest stories and both mine AND my wife’s plane went down?  Then what about my kids?  Who would they end up with?  Would there be a fight between the families?  I’ve seen the pain of children mourning parents – how would they cope with that through life?  Would they know how much I loved them, or just remember the conflicts?

            All of this was very irrational because I knew very well that I was not going to die today.  But fear has a way of creeping in and paranoia strikes deep.  And it doesn’t help when the stewardess comes on to tell you to buckle up and that she has been order to sit down and buckle up because of some upcoming severe turbulence.  And then plane does its little dance as described earlier.

            But all that aside, what is really striking (and what I started out wanting to talk about) is how we think when suddenly faced with the fact that we are not given forever.  Jesus uses the parable of the bridegroom to warn us that we never know the hour at which he might come back and that we should therefore always be prepared.  I was amused at the way I was running over in my mind the times in the past week or two that I had fallen short of the glory of God and how I would suddenly do anything to make it right again.  I was thinking about the times I was a little harder on the kids than I should have been, analyzing whether or not I spent enough time with them or had always seemed to be too busy for that game of soccer.  Wondering how long it takes a plane to fall 34,000 feet and if that would be enough time for a quick call to my kids, or to leave a last message for them all on my wife’s voicemail.  I was worried about whether the people I loved knew I loved them and how much.  Just a few hours earlier death was nowhere to be seen.  I had plenty of time to correct myself, and strengthen the bonds with my family.  And all of a sudden (however irrational it might be), time was not a certainty.  My house was not in order and I was not prepared for the bride groom.  I had used the oil in my lamp carelessly, and was earnestly begging for more.

The moral of the story: take a bus.