When Israel was in great straits an angel appeared to Gideon offering words of praise but he challenged the message: If the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? We have all probably thought that at one time or another. In the play Fiddler on the Roof Tevye the milkman looks at the the trouble the Jews in his town are experiencing and says, “I know we are the Chosen People but couldn’t God choose somebody else once in a whiie?” The angel is not daunted by the complaint of Gideon but challenges him, “Go with the strength you have and save Israel.” Gideon objects, who me?, I a nobody. What can the likes of me do against all these troubles? At this point God intervenes, “I shall be with you,” the LORD said to him. Yes, we live in perilous times which we can’t see ending. But God sends us just as God sent Gideon to bring whatever compassion, hope, forgivenes, healing we can muster because God is with us.
