Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. – Psalm 96:12

Today's Scripture Reading (July 15, 2025): Psalm 95 & 96

I love the story of Gideon, although perhaps not the parts that most of us remember. I know, the story of Gideon that most of us remember is how he raised an army to take on the enemy that had invaded the land. God kept whittling Gideon's army down until it consisted of only three hundred willing men, we can hardly call these men warriors, whom God would use to defeat the Midianites. The point was that this story would not be about Gideon's military prowess or the overwhelming numbers of men Gideon had raised to stand up against the Midianite invaders. This story isn't really about Gideon; it's about God and what God would do to protect Israel.

My favorite part of the story is found at the beginning. The tale opens up with Gideon threshing wheat in a winepress. Now, we may miss the impact of this situation, but a winepress is a lousy place to thresh wheat; in fact, it doesn't even work well. What the winepress did was hide Gideon while he did his job, and it was an excellent place for making sure that Gideon got dirty. The concept behind threshing is that you throw the wheat into the air, and a gentle breeze carries the light husk away while the heavier seed falls to the ground. But there is no breeze, or not much, in a winepress. You throw the wheat up, and it all falls back down.

Gideon's problem is that there are Midianites in the area who want to raid the harvest and steal his seed. He is alone and scared. He needs the grain he has grown to feed his family and survive. So, he threshes his grain in a winepress.

It is in the winepress that the angel finds Gideon. The angel addresses him as a mighty warrior, but the comment is dripping with sarcasm. At that moment, Gideon didn't feel or look much like a mighty warrior.

But there is a truth found in the early part of the story that we miss; War has a tendency to impact the fields in which we farm and the forests where we might go for solitude. It has been one of the effects we have seen with the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Ukraine was the breadbasket of Eastern Europe, but bombs and armies have had a detrimental effect on farms and food production. As a result, the crops aren't grown and the people can't be fed.

David talks about a day of peace, and on this day, he says the fields will be jubilant and the forests will sing for joy. It is a day when the fields are left to yield their grain, and the trees bear their fruit with nothing to stop them. It is a time when farmers like Gideon can thresh their grain in the open because no one is waiting around the corner to steal the grain and deprive the fields and trees of their proper function.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 105