{"id":775,"date":"2026-10-04T06:56:40","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T11:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/?p=775"},"modified":"2026-10-04T06:56:41","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T11:56:41","slug":"a-greeting-he-had-not-earned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/2026\/10\/04\/a-greeting-he-had-not-earned\/","title":{"rendered":"A Greeting He Had Not Earned"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- POST TITLE: A Greeting He Had Not Earned -->\n<style>@import url('https:\/\/fonts.googleapis.com\/css2?family=Oswald:wght@400;500;700&family=Newsreader:ital,wght@0,400;0,500;1,400&display=swap');\n.ohands{--bg:#F5ECCC;--darkest:#17343B;--mid:#275C65;--heading:#C04B42;--cool:#2F83A3;--light:#FFD279;--surface-verse:#FFF6E3;--surface-deep:#DCE8DE;font-family:'Newsreader',Georgia,serif;color:var(--darkest);background:var(--bg);max-width:720px;margin:2em auto;padding:2.5em 2em;line-height:1.7;font-size:1.05em}\n.ohands .eyebrow{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.85em;letter-spacing:.18em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--mid);font-weight:500;margin:0 0 .4em}\n.ohands h2{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.3em;letter-spacing:.08em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--mid);margin:2em 0 .7em;border-bottom:1px solid var(--heading);padding-bottom:.3em}\n.ohands .verse{font-family:'Newsreader',Georgia,serif;font-style:italic;font-size:1.08em;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:normal;background:var(--surface-verse);border-left:4px solid var(--heading);padding:1.1em 1.4em;margin:1.4em 0;color:var(--darkest)}\n.ohands .verse-cite{display:block;font-style:normal;font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.82em;letter-spacing:.1em;color:var(--mid);margin-top:.6em;text-transform:uppercase}\n.ohands .divider{border:none;border-top:1px solid var(--heading);margin:2em auto;width:80px}\n.ohands p{margin:0 0 1.1em}\n.ohands .pull{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.15em;letter-spacing:.04em;color:var(--darkest);border-top:1px solid var(--heading);border-bottom:1px solid var(--heading);padding:1em 0;margin:1.6em 0;text-align:center;line-height:1.4}\n.ohands .ohands-deep{background:var(--surface-deep);border-left:4px solid var(--cool);padding:1.1em 1.4em;margin:1.4em 0}\n@media (max-width:600px){.ohands{padding:1.6em 1.2em}}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ohands\">\n<p class=\"eyebrow\">Open Hands &middot; Week 3 &middot; Sunday &middot; INSECURITY<\/p>\n<p>You need to know one thing about a winepress to feel this passage properly. A winepress is a pit, cut down into rock, with walls. You press grapes in it. You do not thresh wheat in it, because threshing wheat requires throwing it into the air so the wind carries the chaff away, and a pit has no wind in it.<\/p>\n<p>So the first thing Scripture tells us about this man is that he is doing the right work in the wrong place, badly, because he is afraid of being seen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">Then the angel of the LORD came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites.<span class=\"verse-cite\">Judges 6:11 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Hold that picture. A grown man down in a hole, doing an inefficient version of a job he knows how to do properly, so that nobody notices him.<\/p>\n<p>And then the greeting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">And the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon and said, &ldquo;The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valor.&rdquo;<span class=\"verse-cite\">Judges 6:12 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Spoken to the Man in the Pit<\/h2>\n<p>I have heard that verse preached as though God were looking past the winepress to the man Gideon would become &mdash; a kind of prophecy, true later. I do not think that is what is happening, and the grammar does not support it. It is addressed to the man who is in the hole at the time it is said.<\/p>\n<p>Which means it is not a description of his performance. Nothing in his performance that morning warrants it. It is a description of what God is bringing to him, attached to a name God intends to use.<\/p>\n<p>Gideon does not take it. First he argues about God&#8217;s track record &mdash; if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us &mdash; and then, when God gives him an assignment anyway, he makes the argument I would have made.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">&ldquo;Please, my Lord,&rdquo; Gideon replied, &ldquo;how can I save Israel? Indeed, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father&rsquo;s house.&rdquo;<span class=\"verse-cite\">Judges 6:15 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That is a r\u00e9sum\u00e9. Two lines of it, and both lines are accurate. He is not being falsely modest and he is not fishing. Weakest clan in the tribe, youngest son in the household &mdash; in that culture those are the two coordinates that tell you how much weight a man&#8217;s word carries, and on both of them he is at the bottom.<\/p>\n<h2>God Does Not Argue the R\u00e9sum\u00e9<\/h2>\n<p>Here is the part I keep going back to. God never contests either claim.<\/p>\n<p>He does not say the clan is stronger than Gideon thinks. He does not point out some overlooked qualification. He does not do the thing we do with each other, which is to list the person&#8217;s strengths back at them until they feel better.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">&ldquo;Surely I will be with you,&rdquo; the LORD replied, &ldquo;and you will strike down all the Midianites as one man.&rdquo;<span class=\"verse-cite\">Judges 6:16 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That is not a rebuttal. It is a change of subject. Gideon is arguing about what he brings; God answers about who is coming with him. The two are not on the same topic at all, and God simply declines to have the conversation Gideon wants to have.<\/p>\n<p class=\"pull\">He answered with a r\u00e9sum\u00e9. God answered with His presence. Those are not the same conversation.<\/p>\n<h2>Why This One Lands on Me<\/h2>\n<p>I have built a career on credentials. Certifications, a master&#8217;s, the letters after a name, the list of organizations I have worked with &mdash; and every one of those is real and most of them cost me something to get. I am not knocking them.<\/p>\n<p>But a man who has built on credentials has a particular problem waiting for him, which is that the day comes when the ground moves and the credentials do not cover the new terrain. And when that day arrives, the thing you reach for is the thing Gideon reached for: a list. Here is what I have. Here is why it is not enough. Here is why not me.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ohands-deep\">\n<p>And the verse that follows all of it, further down the chapter, is the one that should unsettle anybody who has ever assembled a good team and felt secure about it: God tells Gideon he has <em>too many men<\/em>. Not too few. Twenty-two thousand go home before the fight starts, and then nine thousand seven hundred more, and the reason given is so that nobody can say afterward that their own hand saved them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>There is a security underneath all this that does not come from the list, and the psalm says where it sits.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion. It cannot be moved; it abides forever.<span class=\"verse-cite\">Psalm 125:1 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>What This Week Is About<\/h2>\n<p>Insecurity is not low self-esteem and it is not a lack of confidence. It is an identity resting on something that can be taken from you &mdash; a result, a role, a record, somebody else&#8217;s opinion, a child&#8217;s report card. Whatever is holding most of your identity holds the power to make you insecure, and it will use it.<\/p>\n<p>This week, five people answer with a r\u00e9sum\u00e9. A teenager whose worth is reported back to her hourly. A new supervisor talking too much. A mother reading a verdict on herself in her child&#8217;s grades. A man turning down what he is being handed because of who he used to be. A woman building a whole system to keep one weakness out of sight.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow it starts with a phone, face down on a bed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Open Hands &middot; Week 3 &middot; Sunday &middot; INSECURITY You need to know one thing about a winepress to feel this passage properly. A winepress is a pit, cut down into rock, with walls. You press grapes in it. You&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-hands"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SU_20261004_BLOG.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions\/777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}