There are acts of faith, animated by the living Spirit of God, which mean that in hopeless times we do hopeful things, much as the shepherd boy David did, as he prepared to face Goliath. Hopeless by human standards? Certainly! But David, the future king of Israel, was imbued by the strength of God’s Holy Spirit, and as the wicked giant stood poised to slaughter young David, God turned sure defeat into a rousing victory -- one that was startlingly quick and complete. And certainly God’s Spirit can work that way sometimes within our lives... almost as though we were spun around in our tracks, or pulled back just as we were ready to fall off a great precipice.
But, of course, God’s Spirit doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes He seems to work at an excruciatingly slow pace. Remember Job, a man also filled with God’s Holy Spirit, who was reduced to sitting on a heap of rubbish scraping his running sores with broken pieces of pottery. And yet even a person in such circumstances was able to say, “I know that my redeemer liveth... and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself, and not as a stranger!” There is no doubt at all that that kind of conviction has within it the seeds of ultimate victory. Those are words that could only have been planted in Job by God Himself. That kind of victory means that even though today’s defeat might be bitter to the taste, nevertheless we can live in the knowledge that this hour’s defeat may well contribute to tomorrow’s final victory.
To that end, may we always do the best things, even in the worst times.
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Pictured: "David and Goliath"
From Bible historiale by Guiard des Moulins
French (Paris), c. 1300-1325