What happens when someone cries out to God?
He answers! But not
always in the way we expect Him to...
"The angel of the LORD came
and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the
Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to
keep it from the Midianites. When the angel of the LORD appeared to
Gideon, he said, 'The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.' 'Pardon me, my
lord,' Gideon replied, 'but if the LORD is with us, why has all this
happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us
about when they said, 'Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt?' But
now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.'"
(Judg 6:11-13, NIV2)
Gideon was the answer to these prayers, but
he didn't know it yet. When the angel appeared to him, he was far from
being a pillar of faith. Instead he spent his time complaining that God
had abandoned them.
How often don't we do the same? How often
haven't we also said, "If the LORD is with us, why has all this happened
to us?"
We forget that it's through adversity that we become
champions of faith, not the other way around. After all, Jesus didn't
promise us a rose garden, instead he promised that He would stand by us
at all times, which is way better than any other promise: "If the world
hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the
world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the
world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world
hates you." (John 15:18-19, NIV)
Gideon wasn't prepared for the
angel's response: "The LORD turned to him and said, 'Go in the strength
you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?'"
(Judg 6:14, NIV2) In other words, Gideon was the answer to what he was
complaining about!
When we have similar concerns as Gideon, may
we always remember that just maybe, God is making us aware that we may
be the answer!
Adversity can come to us in many ways, as we have
already noticed when we flew to London (See Heathrow's Hunger Games.
Facing Unimaginable Odds, Part 28a). Our trials, however, were far from
over...
We arrived safely in Edinburgh with no visible incidents.
When we approached the luggage belt, one of our suitcases was already
there. Whew. But wait. Where was the other one? We waited...and
waited...but our second suitcase never appeared. Naturally, it was the
suitcase that contained all of our medicine, our battery chargers and
our toiletries...
"Don't worry. We'll find it!" Said the one in
charge of lost luggage. He guaranteed that it would be delivered within
2 days.
It was later discovered that the suitcase we now had in
hand had remained in London. The second one, however, had gone on to
Aberdeen, our missed destination. But where it went wasn't really the
issues, was it. The issue was that two days later, we still had not
obtained our suitcase.
Fortunately, our host lent us a phone
charger so we had our phone back into service, which meant that we could
call British Airways Lost Luggage Department on Sunday. No one answered,
however, and the next day we were leaving for Portree. We called again
the next morning, and we were told they could not do anything about our
suitcase. We would have to call the courier...
Needless to say,
it was another two days before our lost suitcase finally came into our
possession. Finally we were back to normal. We had our long lost friend
back in custody, all of our devices were fully charged, and my wife once
again had her cancer medication. From now on, all medicine goes on board
the plane!
Funny enough, when we rented our car in Edinburgh, we
had been warned that there was no spare tire in our rental car. We were
told that if we had a flat tire we should call for help. We had to tell
the agent about our dead cell phone. She laughed and suggested that we
send smoke signals...
Still our Father came through big time in
our hour of need, as we will discover in our next devotional.
Have you lost your luggage? No worries. We will eventually find it some
day! Guaranteed! At least I hope so!
Rob Chaffart
The Lost Suitcase. Facing Unimaginable Odds, Part 30a
Today's Bible Verse:
"The People of Israel, reduced to grinding poverty by Midian, cried
out to GOD for help." (Judg 6:6, MSG)
The Lost Suitcase. Facing Unimaginable Odds, Part 30a
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