And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.
Hebrews 11:32-35 (NIV)
Commended for Their Faith
Six of them meet on Tuesdays in the basement, and two of them asked for the same thing in the same month, four years ago. One of them got it. They have never once talked about that at the table, and by now nobody expects them to.
Both of them still come. The one who got it brings the biscuits and is careful about it, and the one who didn’t is the one who stacks the chairs at the end, which he started doing that first year and has not stopped.
Hebrews 11 runs through people its readers had grown up hearing about, and the writer says he hasn’t the time to tell them properly. Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel. Kingdoms conquered, lions’ mouths shut, flames quenched, the edge of the sword escaped.
The list keeps going past the rescues. Women received back their dead, raised to life again, and there were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.
The writer doesn’t sort them. He runs the delivered and the undelivered through the same sentence, with the same and in front of each, and calls the whole of it faith. A man can march around a city and watch the walls come down, and a man can go about in sheepskins, destitute and mistreated, and the chapter has one word for both.
Every one of them was commended for their faith, and none of them received what had been promised. Some of them had gained what was promised, and the thing promised to all of them still hadn’t come. So the one who got the answer and the one who didn’t are waiting on the same thing, and neither of them has it.
The chairs go up on the stack six to a column. The other one holds the door, the way he does, and they go out into the lot together.
A Prayer to Remember
I have kept a private ledger on two people I love, God, and I have long since worked out which of them you answered. Take the ledger off me. Let me sit with the one who didn’t get it without hunting for a reason, and don’t let me be careful with either of them.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
