“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.” – Judges 6:13

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 26, 2015): Judges 6

Maybe it is the real Christmas question – if God has come then why is the world the way that it is? If the incarnation is a real thing, and not just the product of someone’s imagination, then why is it that evil seems to reign? Why does something like the Islamic State exist to spread their own special breed of hate in the world where the Christ of love has come? Why do people do evil when it is the goodness of God that is supposed to be making a difference in this world? Just why?

It is the question that is on Gideon’s lips. And it is one that we ask continually ourselves. If God is really with us, why has all this happened to us? Gideon had heard the stories of a God who had released Israel from their lives as slaves in Egypt. He knew the stories of the crossing of the Red Sea and all of the tales of a man named Moses. But none of that was doing him any good in the place where he lived. They were just stories of the past. What Gideon needed was a God who wanted to do something to him now.

And sometimes that is exactly the way that the Christmas Story seems to us. It is a story, nothing more. The baby in the manger ranks up there with the Story of Santa and his reindeer, or the Elf on the Shelf. It makes no difference in the world in which we live.

What Gideon – and we – miss is that we have a role to play in the process. God has come to us in a way that Santa never will, and God was with Gideon. But what Gideon failed to understand is that while God had chosen and was with Israel, Israel had never really chosen to be with God. And that was the question that the angel had for Gideon. God is with you might warrior, will you choose to be with him and be the agent of change that your world needs.

We live in a world where Christians seem to believe that the world is in a downward spiral – and it when it reaches the bottom Christ will return. But the biblical story does not seem to support that idea – at least not as long as we choose to be with God. The reality is that we are the Gideons of our generation. The core message of the season is that Christ has come – he has chosen us. And if we are willing to choose him, then we will be the agents of change for better in this world. But just as was true with Gideon, first we have to choose the one who has chosen and come to us.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Judges 7