Category: Morning Musings

Morning Musings: Judges 6:36-37

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“Then Gideon said to God, ‘If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said, behold, I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor.  If there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said.'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Gideon’s fleece has become synonymous with testing God.  And that’s exactly what Gideon was doing.  But, far from anything praiseworthy or worth imitating, this was an act of faithlessness by a man who was a coward. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Judges 6:12-13

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“And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.’  And Gideon said to him, ‘Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?  And where are his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, “Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?”  But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

The story of Gideon is one of my favorites.  This isn’t because of why you might think.  It is often presented to highlight the faith and courage of Gideon as he takes his army of 300 and defeats the thousands of Midianite soldiers in a decidedly non-traditional fashion (God seems to excel at devising…creative…battle plans to make sure He gets the glory for the victory).  While perhaps Gideon was courageous and faithful in that moment, I tend to see his story as evidence of God’s willingness and ability to work through anybody to accomplish His plans, even a whiney coward. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Judges 2:14

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“So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers, who plundered them.  And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

The Lord is a father and the people of Israel were His children.  (He’s also a bridegroom and they were His bride which is kind of an odd mixing of metaphors, but both are nonetheless appropriate at different times to describe our relationship with Him.)  When they refused to stay on the path down which He was leading them, He disciplined them.  What this summary description of how the rest of the book of Judges is going to go reveals is that once the people were settled in the land they struggled mightily with faithfulness. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Judges 1:19

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“And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Starting here and six more times in this chapter we see this phrase, “And he did not drive out…”  The command was to drive out completely or else you are going to pay for it, but they did not obey.  They did not obey, and as the rest of the story of Judges makes clear, they did indeed pay for it.  They stopped doing what the Lord had commanded, so He stopped helping them do it, so the peoples of Canaan remained in the land.  The Lord had told them that if the peoples of Canaan were allowed to remain in the land, they would trip them up and lead them astray.  If the people went astray, they were going to lose the blessings of obedience and gain the Lord Himself as their chief opponent.  And it all happened. Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Joshua 23:12-13

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“For if you turn back and cling to the remnant of these nations remaining among you and make marriages with them, so that you associate with them and they with you, know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you, but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good ground that the Lord your God has given you.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Have you ever tried clearing a path for the first time?  I haven’t, but before we moved into our new house, we rallied some men from the church to come and help us clear the backyard.  No one had touched it for what was likely several years and it was a mess.  The patch of trees and branches and vines was so thick that you could just barely see through to the land behind us.  It took the group of us several hours, several chainsaws, a tractor, and two different days, but we got it done.  With all the mess and poison ivy (which I discovered the hard way I can get…twice) now gone, it’s well on its way to be a great space.  Eventually.  I can’t imagine how much work it would have been to have tried doing all that work on my own. Read the rest…