Big Giants and Small god versus Small giants and Big God

No one is immune to experiencing impossibilities, challenges so demanding that quitting looms as the best choice of few options. We can all say, "Been there, done that!" Shrugging it all off and going forward as if everything is all right is not an alternative. Reality demands a response.

At this week’s midweek prayer and Bible study meeting at our local Assembly a list of needs included a 39-year-old father and husband who is laying at death’s door as a result of a flu virus. We learned a few days ago that a friend and co-worker from our New Jersey church planting days has been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). A college classmate is undergoing another battery of chemotherapy for recurring cancer. Two pastor friends have had strokes leaving them legally blind. And one of our best volunteers has liver cancer.

This week Pat and I spent time with a pastor and his wife who are so discouraged to the point of just wanting out! My brother calls from our hometown, Detroit, and relates how the city has been handed over to managers trying to avoid municipal bankruptcy. Our national leaders cannot agree on anything. The list is growing and the dysfunctions and diseases are everywhere.

Caleb, the Old Testament patriarch of faith and example waited more than forty years to overcome a delay caused by ten peers who could only see huge giants and served a shriveled and emaciated god. For forty years Caleb believed in a huge God and sickly giants! Caleb inspires me! He could have quit, but didn’t. He could have whined, but didn’t. He could have blamed others for his discontent, but didn’t. Caleb waited for the promise of his Big God to keep a promise. Caleb’s confidence, long endurance and faithfulness were sufficient for him to inherit the land Moses could only see from a distance and ten other spies never did possess. And Caleb even had enough to share an inheritance with his children.

It is not clear how Caleb passed the time between the moment he saw the land promised to him and when he actually lived there. Forty years is a long waiting season. It is safe to assume that he practiced what the Psalmist penned years later,
We wait in hope for the LORD;
he is our help and our shield.
In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name.
– Psalm 33:20-21
Pat and I wait in hope and pray daily for our friends over whom the troubles and distresses of life have come. We pray that in this waiting time, the season of delay and uncertainty, that each will know God’s strong promises and experience His deliverance. I am more convinced than ever that our great God is listening to our prayers, understands our heart, and will not be late or faulty in His responses.