The Duet, pt.2
Judges 5:16-18
“Why did you sit still among the sheepfolds, to hear the whistling for the flocks? Among the clans of Reuben there were great searchings of heart. Gilead stayed beyond the Jordan; and Dan, why did he stay with the ships? Asher sat still at the coast of the sea, staying by his landings. Zebulon is a people who risked their lives to the death; Naphtali, too, on the heights of the field.”
Despite the deficiency of modern English to translate the poetic power of these Hebrew verses, the spiritual currents rumble under the page, as if the scroll is a dam holding back torrents of water, and the dam is about to burst—about to immerse us into the shadowy depths of self-examination.
Upon searching my own heart just now, I encountered within myself a promised land divided. I found a Zebulon in my ambitions that is willing to throw everything on the line for the sake of the gospel, willing like Peter to die for the LORD, and, like Paul, to consider all worldly things as dung in contrast to the Kingdom of Heaven. Even deeper in, I find a tribe of Naphtali, armed to the hilt with a well-worn sling and sword, waiting in the open field for the gleam of iron chariots to finally appear. Oh, but there’s Asher in me as well. A part of me that sits idly by as the minutes turn to hours, waiting to increase my own welfare as I anxiously watch the waters. And Dan, too—that part of me that stays as far from the fray as I can and hides out in the hull of a ship waiting for the storm to pass. Alas, I find Gilead, at the end of my search—that part of me that is unwilling to cross the Jordan again; the inclination to retreat in my spirit that would rather hang up the sandals of yesterday’s victories than wear them again.
Oh, friend, sing the psalm of Deborah and Barak for the good of your own soul today. Whatever triumphs you find within, bathe them in a chorus of thanksgiving! And whatever failures you meet, bury them in a refrain of confession. But let the melodies of divine mercy saturate this new day as you step forward in faith.