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.  

Dirt

     “Do you have something in the oven?”  My wife asked me one Saturday morning.

     “Yes”.

     “What are you making” She had that expectant half smile, thinking that I was maybe making something good for breakfast.
     “Dirt.”  The half smile disappeared and was replaced by a half quizzical, half unsurprised (because it was, after all, me) look.
     “Dirt?”
     “Well…mud, really.  But I’m hoping it will turn into dirt.”
     “By now,” she said, “I should know better than to ask; but… why?”

The reason was that I needed dirt for an illustration for a sermon I was giving the next morning.  We had just started preaching a series on growing through adversity; growing through being sifted, in other words. So in this illustration I was to take some dirt (very useless dirt that won’t grow anything – which my yard is full of), put a handful of larger rocks in it, then sift it through one of my mesh strainers from the kitchen.  And lastly, go by a new mesh strainer.  After the sifting there would be two piles:  A pile of useless dirt in which nothing could grow, and a pile of rocks.  I would point out that which pile we land in depends on our response to the seasons of sifting in our lives.  I would point out the uselessness of the dirt and go on about that for a bit; then I would point out the significance of a rock.  That people used to build alters out of rocks, that David brought down Goliath with a rock, that Simon was given the name Peter (Petra) which means rock, that Christ describes faith as a rock on which he will build his church, etc. etc.  I would then present the audience with a choice:  Do you want to be dirt, or do you want to be a rock.  It is completely up to us.

 Unfortunately it had been raining all night.  Although the illustration was for the benefit of the audience, I was learning a lesson by getting it ready.  The Holy Spirit had given me the idea for the illustration late in the week before.  But I didn’t act on it.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it (yeah, yeah - I know). There had been plenty of sunny days between then and now, and I knew it was likely to rain over the weekend.  When it started raining Friday night I thought, “Ehh, don’t really need the illustration anyways” (yeah, yeah - I know). Of course when I woke up Saturday morning the Holy Spirit burdened my heart with the illustration to the point that I couldn’t relax with my coffee until I had gone outside and gathered enough dirt.  

Except there wasn’t any dirt.  There was only mud.  So I thought about how mud becomes dirt: by being baked in the sun’s heat.  Well I couldn’t simulate the sun, but I could simulate the heat.

“Won’t that just make it a brick?”  asked my wife.  I hadn’t thought about that.  Surely there was more to making bricks than just baking simple mud.  Right?  Maybe, just to be safe, if I slow baked it, instead of trying to dry it too fast, it would keep it from hardening into a brick.  So I set the oven to 200 degrees.  About twelve hours later I pull it out of the oven.  It had dried! Into a brick.  So know I had to find something (I ended up using a screw driver) to break it into chunks, and then grind the chunks back into dirt with my hands. In the end it was a time consuming, messy process that could have been avoided had I just done what I was supposed to do in the first place.  So the lesson here is this: things – life in general – are easier when we do things God’s way the first time.