Vessels of Clay
“So Gideon and the men who were with him came to the outpost of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch… Then the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers…and they cried, “The sword of the LORD and of Gideon!” And every man stood in his place all around the camp; and the whole (Midianite) army ran, cried out and fled” (Judges 7:19-22).
Three hundred men ambushed an army, “as numerous as locusts; and camels without number, as the sand by the sea,” (Judges 7:12)
Three hundred men armed with nothing but swords, trumpets and clay pitchers containing a flame.
At Gideon’s command each man blew his trumpet, broke the pitcher and shouted at the top of his lungs. And “the whole army ran, cried out and fled.” (Along with a gazillion stampeding camels.)
MacDonald writes of this occasion:
I will not shift my ground like [Midian’s] king,
But from this spot whereon I stand, I pray—
From this same barren rock to thee I say,
"Lord, in my commonness, in this very thing
That haunts my soul with folly—through the clay
Of this my pitcher, see the lamp's dim flake;
And hear the blow that would the pitcher break”
—George MacDonald
This very thing—this “commonness" that haunts our souls with frailty, weakness and folly, the ordinary clay of our humanity—contains the Lord of Light and Loveliness. Our brokenness allows His beauty to be seen.
“We have this treasure in earthen vessels…” (2 Corinthians 4:7a).
David Roper
2.11.21
