Good Friday - Christina Rossetti

 

AM I a stone and not a sheep   That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross,   To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss, And yet not weep?   Not so those women loved            Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;   Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly; Not so the thief was moved;   Not so the Sun and Moon   Which hid their faces in a starless sky,          A horror of great darkness at broad noon—   I, only I.   Yet give not o’er,   But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock; Greater than Moses, turn and look once more            And smite a rock

The Forty Days: 4. A Giant Problem

During the forty days of Lent we have been looking at some other 'forty days' in the Bible.  

As a point of introduction, today it is forty days since Russia invaded Ukraine to plunge Europe into a situation we liked to think had been left behind in 1945.  (Some hope, given European history).

While forty days often seem to have a divine connection in Scripture, that is not always so.  Back in the days of Israelite King Saul his primitive army faced harassment from the Philistines.  One in particular made a mockery of Saul's forces - a giant man named Goliath.  Day after day he issued a dueling challenge:

For forty days the Philistine came forward every morning and evening and took his stand.

On reaching 40 days of the Russian-Ukraine War we can perhaps appreciate the length of intimidation Goliath represented.  And the heart of the problem was that there seemed no more likelihood of him being rivalled on the evening of the fortieth day than on the morning of the first.

Length of time - for all its meaning in Lent - is not a virtue by itself.  As we all know, the contest was settled by the whizz of one stone from David's sling - from a David who utterly trusted in the power of God to make his own learned skills count.

Have you been watching giants for 40 days?  Is it time to fight and trust the Lord?