The Stranger watched from where he stood inside
the winery, leaning against its rock wall. “What new normal?”
It was a simple question, but to Gideon it
seemed . . . prophetic. His eyes darted across the dirty floor in search of the relief he’d felt ten
seconds earlier.
“You know. Now that those symbols of
oppression are gone, the pressure is off, and we can all go back to our lives.”
He stole a look at the quiet man across the empty space. Managing a weak smile,
Gideon added, “We sure showed them, didn’t we?”
“You think they’ve given up then,” the
Stranger said, more of a statement than a question.
Gideon propped his straw broom against the
ladder and rested one elbow over a rung. “Sure. Don’t you?” Please say yes,
please say yes, he begged silently.
“No.”
That old, sinking feeling hijacked Gideon’s
chest and just for a second he felt the room spin. “You don’t.”
“No.”
“I need to sit down,” Gideon mumbled as his
feet slid out from under him. Would this nightmare ever end? He wasn’t
cut out for confrontation. He was a peace-loving man who wanted nothing
more than for everyone to just get along. Was that too much to ask?
“Yes.”
Yesterday if the quiet guy had intruded on
Gideon’s thoughts, he’d have been shocked. But he was getting used to this bizarre
invasion of his privacy. “Why?” he asked.
The Stranger motioned for Gideon to follow. “Come
with me."
There was no point in arguing. Standing to his
feet, Gideon followed him up the ladder out of the rock pit to the obstinate
oak growing through the gap it created in the boulder above the winepress. Barely
had he cleared the last rung when a frantic voice called out his name.
“Gideon!”
He shaded his eyes from the sun and watched as
a red-faced, bearded man raced over to him. “We’re as good as dead!” he gushed,
out of breath. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do!”
Gideon looked from the messenger to where the
Stranger had been, frowning as he realized he was gone. This disappearing act
was getting pretty old. Here he was, alone with no one else for company but
this harbinger of bad news. If he ever saw that Guy again, he was gonna give
him a piece of whatever mind he had left.
Shaking the wimpering fellow by his shoulders,
Gideon demanded, “What’re you talking about? Get a grip, man, and tell me what’s
happened!”
It wasn’t good. And it wasn't bad.
It was terrible. Terrible and predictable. It was déjà vu all
over again. For seven years, Gideon and his countrymen were dominated by an
evil culture who regularly robbed them and destroyed everything else
in their path while they did it. These thieving punks from Midian joined up
with a group of Amalekites and eastern masses who knew exactly when the crops
across Jordan’s river were ready to be harvested. Like devouring grasshoppers,
135,000 of their combined forces were on the march headed straight for the
mountain people and their produce—everything they’d worked for. Gideon’s people
were in their sights. And Gideon’s wheat.
“They’re in the valley below at this very
moment!” the messenger exclaimed. “We’re outnumbered. Out armed. There’s panic
in the fields and village, Gideon!” The frustrated man slammed a fist against
the tree. “Why won’t they just leave us alone?”
It was the question of the ages. And the day
of its reckoning had come.
All these years, Gideon had tried to be
invisible. He’d worked hard and worked quietly. “Don’t rock the boat,” was the
motto etched into his soul by . . . who? He couldn’t remember. In the back of
his mind while he’d spent months and years hiding in the supposed safety of the
pit at his feet, he wondered when he’d quit believing. What was the pivotal
moment when he gave up his convictions, his self-respect, and his courage?
All the suppressed emotion of the last seven
years welled up inside him and he swallowed hard. There were worse things than
dying. Living like this, for one. It wasn’t even living. He should have been
out in the open, in the fresh air with its beneficial breezes while he threshed
the wheat and tossed its lightweight chaff into the air to be blown away.
Instead, he’d been self-suffocating in a pit, covering his ears while the cries
of his people and the laughter of his enemies resonated around him every single
harvest.
Enough.
A courage unlike anything he’d ever felt before
flooded him from the ground up, overflowing in such power and strength that the
weeping man standing next to him stopped crying, staring at Gideon in disbelief.
“What are you thinking?” he asked Gideon in a
trembling voice, a tinge of hope shading its whisper.
“It’s time to fight,” Gideon answered in a
voice filled with such resolve it didn’t even sound like his own. “And it’s
time to win.”
With total gratitude to Judges chapter 6, and the focus on verses 33-34. "The Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon with Himself and took possession of him . . . "
My personal thanks to David L. for the incredible photo included with this piece. His amazing shot can be viewed by going to his photostream at the following link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/david82/
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