The Gideons

For some years after I retired, until ill health forced my resignation, I was a member of the Gideons. The Gideons, as mentioned in my last blog, raise funds in order to distribute Bibles around the world. Their only aim is to distribute the Word of God. They distribute Bibles to schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and hotels. Nursing and police graduates are also offered a New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs.

Several years ago, when a group of us were visiting hotels and motels to replace any stolen, lost or damaged Bibles, I was shocked by the reaction of one motel manager. Invariably when two of us presented ourselves to the front desk of any given establishment, we were treated cordially and with respect. Also invariably we were asked to leave a certain number of volumes for their stock room. That was until we stopped and knocked on the locked office door of a small town motel. After a lengthy wait at the door, we were just about to simply leave when a middle aged woman came to the door. We stated our business as usual and soon realized that this manager or owner was visibly agitated. We actually had started to back up when she exploded. I don’t know how else to describe her aggressive outburst. She yelled and screamed things that I don’t wish to repeat in print. She advanced at us very aggressively. For our safety and indeed for her safety, we beat a hasty retreat into the idling car and much like escaping bandits demanded that the driver “step on it”. Within a few hundred yards, the driver pulled over to the side of the road and the four of us began to see the humour in the whole scene. It was fairly obvious that the establishment that was last on our list for the day did not want any Bibles. I have often wondered since why the woman had reacted to vehemently to the offer of the printed Word of God. It was evident that I should not return and ask the question directly. The only answer I can ever come up with is that the light of our faith must have offended her. She desired darkness and our light fairly blinded her eyes and caused great anger…palpable, frightening anger. In 2Corinthians 4: 6-7 we read about the light of the gospel as it shines forth from believers.

6 For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.

The Apostle Paul is making an obvious reference to Gideon who in the Book of Judges, after being advised very directly by God Himself, led 300 men into battle against a much larger army. By placing torches in empty pitchers, the three hundred were able to get very close to the sleeping enemy and by blowing trumpets, yelling and pulling the flaming torches from the “earthen vessels”, drove the enemy off in a panic. Verse seven makes it plain that for the believer, our light is within a frail and disposable human body. Quite literally, when we visited the small town motel, the reaction of that woman to the light released from our “earthen vessels” was something like the panic displayed by the enemies of Gideon and God.

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