Trumpets

    His glance flickered from Gideon, who in the moonlight looked smaller and paler than he looked in the daylight, to the valley below where their enemy slept with swords beside their heads, ready for a fight. In one hand he clutched a jar that contained a small flame and in the other he fingered a trumpet. He tried to push from his mind the absurdity of what he was about to do. This was what the Lord told them to bring to battle. There was a purpose, a plan, and they would have the victory. He believed that. But still, as Gideon gave the signal and smashed the jar that held his torch, he couldn’t help thinking, Why a trumpet? 

As I told the story of Gideon to my Sunday school class of second graders, I kept waiting for their eyes to widen. God sent 300 guys to war against thousands with JUST TRUMPETS. This is crazy stuff! But like I was when I was their age, they have heard these stories so often they’ve lost their crazy factor. 

There is an inherent absurdity to much of what God has asked his people to do over the past few millennia. There were actually several times when God sent trumpeters into battle. He picks absolute nobodies to be prophets and kings and queens. The Savior was a refugee from an oppressed minority who sparked controversy with His every word, enraging and frightening everyone in His world who seemed to have the most power until they finally forced His execution (but He triumphed in that too).

There are times in my own life where what I am doing has a twinge of the absurd. I look at the world I’m living in, one that’s filled with sickness, and depression, and anger, and war, and hunger, and emptiness. And it seems like all I have to fight back with is my words. My trumpet. 

I want to make people laugh. I want to make them think. Will it make a difference? I don’t know. But I know that the same God who sent the brass section into battle against trained soldiers and gave them victory, can do something with my words that I could never have imagined. 

Even when writing feels like making noise into the world that may never be heard. When adding my voice to the flood of voices that fill your facebook feed feels like being just another trumpeter lined up around the valley, drowned out by the noise of all the other trumpets and shouts of war. 

And I wonder, Why am I doing this? I could just stay safe and quiet at home and another trumpet would easily replace me on the front lines. No one would particularly miss my contribution to the noise. 

But I would miss it. If I let other people trumpet for me, I don’t get to hear the Lord magnify that sound a thousand times over. I don’t get to see the walls fall.