WOYWW: Mighty Champion!

 I am painting the companion piece to my "Fruit Vendor"

which I finished last week.

This is entitled "Fish Vendor"

and has the same colors and composition.

If you notice, I am painting on my open drawer

as there is no space in my craft room for an easel.

Actually I am painting ON TOP of the things on my

open drawer!

Too absurd really!

Here is my first painting for the Manila Hotel exhibit.

I need two more before August 27.

It's great that today is a holiday!!!

"They had abandoned Him and served Baal...and He delivered them over to plunderers who despoiled them." Judges 2:13-14

 The Lord Himself said He was a jealous God (Exodus 20:5) and the number 1 commandment is that we should have no others gods before Him. Whenever Israel would worship the gods of the people around them, God would get so angry they would experience defeat and would experience His wrath. It sounds funny now that Israel would worship statues made by man, but how about us? Anything we hold more important than following God and His laws is an idol. It can very easily be our children, our husband, our job, or our business. If we are not able to pray and read our bible, because we have so many other things to do, that does seem like other things are more important than our relationship with God, doesn't it?

 "The Lord is with you, O mighty champion!" Judges 6:12

The story of Gideon in Judges chapters 6 to 8 is amazing, but is really quite sad. It starts with the angel of the Lord, calling out to Gideon, "The Lord is with you, O mighty champion!" Although Gideon does not see himself as a mighty hero, God knows what Gideon is capable of. What Gideon sees is a man whose clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh, "and I am the least in my entire family!!!" In other words, Gideon is asking, why choose me to do your work? There are many far more deserving than me. There are men who are stronger, smarter, more capable.

 God sees what WE are capable of. We may not hear Him calling out to us, but if we read the Bible, we can be encouraged by how God sees us. Even if we feel we are weak, not smart enough, not too bright, God can use us in mighty ways, if we are willing to depend on Him and obey him. "The Lord will be your confidence." (Prov.3:26)

"I do you no injustice." Matthew 20:13

This is one of the easier parables to understand. The owner of a vineyard goes out early to hire some workers for his vineyard promising to pay the normal daily wage. At nine in the morning, he sees people standing around doing nothing, and he tells them to go out to his vineyard and he will pay them what is fair. He does the same at noon, at 3 o'clock, and at 5 0'clock. When the day's work was done, the workers were called. The ones who started at 5 pm were paid first and they got a whole day's wage for one hour of work. When those who were hired earlier came to receive their pay, they naturally assumed, they would get more, but they too were paid the normal daily wage. They protested, "Those men worked just one hour and you paid them the same as us who worked the whole day under the hot sun!!!!"

We understand those men, don't we? It's a hard lesson Jesus teaches us here but it needs to be learned. First of all, whatever God has is His to do with as He pleases. All of God's gifts are undeserved and unearned. He just wants to give it to us, and He even paid the price of His Son's life just so He could give it to us. There were many laborers in the marketplace, in the streets, in the fields, all doing nothing, but those laborers were chosen from among them. Unmerited favor. God rewards according to his own set of rules not ours. We think we DESERVE a reward perhaps because that is how the world thinks and teaches us to think. Today there is a lot of talk about what we deserve, especially in advertisements. "Get this car, this drink, this shampoo, because you deserve it." But God's thoughts are entirely different from the way the world thinks.

If however one of the last ones the owner of the vineyard hired was a loved one, someone we knew was badly in need of money maybe because of a sick child, we would rejoice, wouldn't we that he or she was hired for an hour and paid a whole day's wage? I'm hoping that when we get to heaven, we would see a lot of people we are praying for today!

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Blessings!

Patsy