Devotional

Everyone else in the army saw a giant too big to fight. David saw a giant too big to miss.
That shift in perspective is the whole story. Goliath had been standing in the valley for forty days, shouting his defiance every morning and every evening, and for forty days Israel’s army had done the same thing: heard the voice, felt the fear, and retreated to their tents. The giant had not changed. The threat had not changed. What changed when David arrived was the interpretive framework. David was not calculating the size of Goliath against the size of himself. He was calculating the size of Goliath against the size of God, and that comparison made the giant look very different.

God lists Samson and Jephthah in His Hall of Faith. That should give all of us hope.
Jephthah made a rash vow that cost him dearly, a moment of poorly considered words spoken in a high-pressure moment that cannot be undone. Samson’s story is even more publicly catastrophic: a man of supernatural strength who repeatedly surrendered that strength to his weaknesses, who was deceived by a woman he loved, stripped of his gift, blinded, and chained to a grinding stone in his enemy’s prison. These are not tidied-up stories with minor flaws. These are lives marked by significant, consequential failure.

When God called Gideon a mighty man of valour, Gideon was hiding in a winepress.
That is not a minor detail. A winepress was a sunken pit used to crush grapes, not a military staging ground, not a watchtower, not a place anyone of valour would normally be found. Gideon was there because he was afraid of the Midianites, threshing wheat in secret so they would not see it and take it. And into that pit, into that fear, into that hiding place, the angel of the Lord appeared and said: the Lord is with you, you mighty man of valour.