Daily Manna · Day 124 · May 4
Where God Finds You
“And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him, and said unto him, The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.”
Ophrah, under an oak, in the years when Midian ate Israel's harvest before Israel could gather it. A man named Gideon is threshing wheat down in a winepress, which is a pit cut in rock, because a threshing floor is out in the open where raiders can see the chaff blowing. An angel greets him: The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.
Nothing in the scene supports the title, and Gideon says so three verses later: my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. God neither withdraws the greeting nor explains it. He is not describing the man in the pit. He is describing the man he is making.
That is a habit, not an incident. Abram is named a father of many nations while Sarah is barren and he is ninety-nine. Simon is named Peter, a stone, before he has done one solid thing and long before the fire in the courtyard where he denies knowing anybody. Jacob is renamed Israel on the night he loses the wrestle, not the night he wins it. Read them together and a pattern shows: God addresses people by the outcome, and the outcome is his work, not their potential.
So this is an invitation rather than an instruction. You keep a private description of yourself, the blunt one you never say to anyone. You are welcome to bring it to him and hear what he calls you instead. You are also free to keep arguing him down to your own estimate. Gideon tried that. God simply repeated himself.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 124 is Whatsoever He Saith (John 2:5).