I'm not usually a person who enjoys the Old Testament. A lot of times, my heart has a hard time grasping the loving God I usually see with the same God telling His people to completely wipe out civilizations, or muddling through prophecies that just seem to make no sense (Elijah, anyone?), or all of those rules and sacrifices. I understand the purpose and necessity of the Old Testament. It's just that when I sit down and decide to sink my teeth into some Bible, I'll flip to a Gospel that brings hope or some New Testament letter that breeds boldness and encouragement or a Psalm, which is technically in the Old Testament, but meh. But that's exactly where I've been finding my perspective! Whereas the epistles are letters that speak like a conversation and the Psalms are poetry that show just how much emotion a person can have when it comes to God, the Old Testament is full of stories, full of characters, full of little fifty verse plot lines and name drops, and - get this - full of people. Real people. Actual people who actually lived out these stories and actually existed. These aren't fairy tales or made-up dramas. This is real. And I guess that hasn't always clicked for me. I grew up knowing the stories and coloring the coloring pages and learning the songs. They became just stories for me, just the same as any Disney movie or Robinson Crusoe. The potency got lost somewhere along the way.
There's a story in Judges that I don't think I've ever read before, or at least I've done nothing more than skim over it like is, sadly, kind of typical. I was reading it the other day, and for some reason, it jumped. It was about this man named Jephthah, and I won't go into the entire thing (it's Judges 11, by the way), but basically, he was a war general for God's side. He made a vow to God before a major war that if God gave him a clear victory, he would give to God as a sacrificial burnt offering whatever came out of the door of his house to greet him when he returned. I'm not sure if he was just assuming that it would be a goat or a dog or what, but anyways, he wins the battle and comes home, and his one and only child comes running out of the door. Not only was it his only child, but it was a girl. It was his daughter. His princess. So of course, Jephthah is all sorts of anguished about this because he knows what he has to do, and his daughter says simply, "You've given your word. Do to me just as you promised. God did his part and saved you from your Ammonite enemies. Just let me have two months to go off with my friends and mourn, because I'll never have married and be forever a virgin." He let her go, she came back, and he did to her what he had vowed.
I wish I knew the name of that young woman. Her strength and fortitude floors me. She ran out of that house joyfully, and was met with a death sentence that she had had absolutely nothing to do with. I mean, think about it - she was an actual person! She had dreams, she had ambitions, she had longings. She had laughed and cried and hoped and wished and prayed. She had girls that she shared secrets with, there was probably a boy or two that caused her heart to skip. She lived. She was real. And she was strong. What would that have felt like, to be told by your father who had just come home from war that he had no choice but to kill you because of a vow he made to God? I would've raised a fit! I would've been a complete mess, I would've argued, I would've thrown a temper tantrum. But she didn't. She stood there and told her father that he had to do what he had to do. She knew that she was part of a promise to God. Oh, and then she was given two months to finish up life. She could've ran off. She didn't have to come back to face her death and the death of all of her dreams. But she did. I am amazed by that. There's stories like that all over the Bible, but they aren't just stories. They happened! I want the strength and peace that could only come from God that that woman had. I mean, I get overwhelmed and defeated by formal stress and financial issues. This woman faced death.
That's strength.
Easter wasn't that long ago. I've heard the story of Jesus' death probably close to an unexaggerated six million times. It's always powerful, but it's the times when it hits me that this all actually happened that I just sit there, stunned. Jesus actually lived. He was completely and one hundred percent human. What must that night have been like for Him? To be completely and totally betrayed by all of the friends that He loved so much? But I can't blame the disciples at all - I would've been just as terrified as them. To have men come at Him in the dark with torches and swords and hate in their eyes? To stand there and take it while accusation after accusation was flung at Him, while the very people that He was doing all of this for were completely tearing Him apart? Yet I'm feeling hurt over lunchroom gossip about how I've handled formal. Bah, there's perspective. I mean, I can't imagine any of this. I can swallow it when I think of it as a story, but when I let me heart bite into the fact that this is reality, that this is history, that these scenes were played out over across the ocean a couple thousand years ago... I can't fathom how anyone could've done what He did. Especially with the knowledge all along of what was going to happen! Especially when He could've called it off at any time! It's so similar to that story of the woman. He was given the death sentence in a circumstance He didn't create. He didn't make it so that He had to die. That was us. That was our sin, not Him. But He, like the woman in her story, had to pay. And, also like the woman, He could've backed out! At any moment, all of the horrible pain in every single sense would have ended if He just would've said so. But He didn't. It had to be done. There was a vow that had been made.
That's strength.
And not only is that strength, but that's the strength that I have fighting for me. That's the strength that I not only choose to but have to rely on. That's God-strength. I'll never be that strong or that courageous or that peaceful on my own. There's no way. I can't do it, despite how hard I try, and trust me, I've tried. Life is absolutely bigger than me. But God is bigger than life. God, in His strength, got rid of life the way that the world does it and gave me a different standard. And if that strength, that God given strength, could course through the veins of that woman and of Jesus as they faced their own different yet similar deaths, then surely that strength can get me through the rest of this week, and not only that, but the rest of my life.
"...but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." Isaiah 40:31
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