Morning Miracles
Morning Miracles
Judges 6:36-38
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.” And it was so. When he rose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl with water.
I’m not sure which of these qualities is more deficient in Gideon at this stage: his faith or his imagination. But in light of the fact that Almighty God humors Gideon’s strange request here in Judges 6:38, we should read this event with a touch of humor ourselves. Effectively, Gideon’s request adds up to this: “LORD, to prove that You’ll do the great and mighty thing You said You’d do, please do this little, insignificant thing first.” This is faith as small as a mustard seed, and I don’t think any mountains are moving in the background.
If I could’ve taken Gideon aside for a moment and given him a word of advice, it would’ve been this: “Brother, you’ve got the ear of the Creator of the cosmos right now! This is the very God Who dotted the heavens with stars by the flick of His brush and layered the earth with mountains and pastures and rivers by the overflow of His musings and taught the falcon to dive and the lion to roar and the Clydesdale to gallop! Take Him down to the Jordan and ask Him to part the waters in a heap as you cross over on dry ground. Or climb up a nearby mountain and ask Him to hurl a torrent of fire to engulf the summit, while not a hair on your head gets singed. Forget the bucket—have a little more imagination!”
Oh, how glorious is our LORD’s humility toward faithless, fearful children like us. How many times in our topsy-turvy lives of faith have we lacked trust in His Word, yet He responded to our weakness not with bitter scolding but with a little sign of His presence—a commonplace miracle that met us first thing in the morning, that only we saw, but it made all the difference.