Silence, bad planning and heroes.

So, this blog looks a lot like the journals I've kept over the years. Stops and starts with long silences in between. I pick up and put down until I get things to fit correctly. In my mind I have tried to see this as a kind of virtue and not a glaring symptom of integrity deficiency. Certainly the Holy Spirit Himself comes and goes like the wind, at least from what our limited human capacities can glean of it. Yet, it would be foolish to draw any comparison there. Allow me only to say that this is not a responsibility I have abandoned, but more like a project with which I choose to fiddle now and then. As it becomes more developed so will my sense of commitment to its completion.

And why now return one might ask, if one actually read what I am writing (which no one yet seems to do). I might turn again to Elihu himself who sat in great silence for a long period before speaking to Job and then fell silent again as God responded. Certainly Elihu spoke again, though it is not recorded. In the same vein, the last 6 months has brought much change to my life, some of it dramatic, as God speaks through circumstance and through occasion. So, it is time for me to begin writing I feel.

It is to faith I draw my attention today. It is to Jonathan's armor bearer (1 Sam. 14) who when faced with his masters idiotic plan to attack a military outpost strategically placed to repel frontal assaults replied without hesitation "I am with you heart and soul." It is such an enigmatic quality to believe in victory through foolish and derelict plans, and yet we have in the Bible seas dividing and then folding upon armies, walls falling through marches and trumpet calls, armies fleeing at the site of foxes with scorched tails, and so many more improbable stories of success. I have been, by and large, the prophet's servant that needed his eyes opened in order to see chariots of fire and angels shouting down baser voices whom I believed would carry the day. Too often, I see inefficiency and badly conceived ideas.

Today though, I will embrace every dumb notion and plan conceived with childlike faith in a God that has used men and women to destroy the morale of armies with jaw bones, with slings, and with tent pegs. What do I know about plans that change the world? Mine are boring, methodical and ordinary by comparison. God makes heroes of men with insane schemes and faithful hearts.