Mtr Kelli Joyce

Dear Friends in Christ,

The Midianites had been oppressing the people of Israel for almost a decade. God's people planted fields and tended flocks, and the Midianites would come and take or destroy their crops and their livestock. And the people cried out to God because of the violence and poverty that they suffered. God responded by choosing Gideon to lead Israel against the forces of Midian. But God didn't want there to be any chance that there'd be confusion about how the victory came about. So he makes Gideon, by a series of tests, send away all but three hundred of the 32,000 men who he originally recruited to fight with him.

Gideon wasn't especially brave, and didn't have especially strong faith. But despite his fear and his doubts, he did what God asked of him. God chose him for a task, and equipped him to do it, not because Gideon was so full of merit, but because it pleased God to show the power of his love for his people by working through an unexpected leader and an outnumbered army.

God isn't reasonable or practical, and when we are more focused on being reasonable and practical than on doing what God asks of us, we go astray. God calls us, like Gideon, to stand up against injustice and wickedness, even when we are afraid, and even when it doesn't seem possible for us to win on our own. Because we, like Gideon, are never truly on our own.

In peace,
Mtr Kelli