Uncommon strategies

Make-believe carries us places. Books and plays, TV shows and movies transport us into regions and centuries where we cannot otherwise go.

We expect make-believe to whisk us away from reality, offering respite from the daily-ness, the disappointments, the struggles that life relentlessly throws our way. We don’t expect make-believe to offer us uncommon strategies for living real life.

But sometimes it does.

One Sunday afternoon, watching TV with my mom, I saw an old Matlock rerun in which attorney Ben Matlock, played by Andy Griffith, sets out to defend a young man accused of murder. As Matlock enters the courtroom, so does the presiding judge, played by Dick Van Dyke.

We viewers know: The judge committed the murder for which the young man is standing trial.

We think: How impossible to get justice when the person most intent on thwarting justice sits on the bench. How difficult to expose truth when the person most intent on concealing truth appears upright and wields great clout.

In this make-believe story, Matlock does not despair over his seemingly hopeless task. He uses an uncommon strategy to get the judge off the bench and onto the witness stand.

This week, I read Prince Caspian, the second of the Narnia chronicles, also just released in movie version. I won’t give the story away, but here’s a peek: The four children who journeyed to Narnia through an empty wardrobe in the first book find themselves whisked away to the same land again.

There, a dwarf named Trumpkin tells them about a young king Caspian who desperately needs help. After describing the situation, Trumpkin laments, “I suppose I’d better go back to King Caspian and tell him no help has come.”

Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy announce that they have come to help. Trumpkin does not believe four children can provide what Caspian needs. Dismissing their offer, he says, “As it is – we’re awfully fond of children and all that, but just at the moment, in the middle of a war – but I’m sure you understand.”

The children have no great physical strength and no army, yet they offer Caspian something that proves even more valuable: uncommon strategies for victory.

We applaud uncommon strategies in make-believe. In life, however, we look askance at any remedy that seems illogical. Yet, God delights in using uncommon strategies to meet real-life needs.

Once, in the real land of Israel, the men supposed to uphold justice did just the opposite. These men had great authority. In days when “messages from the Lord were very rare, and visions were quite uncommon,” God did what seemed silly and useless: He awoke a boy named Samuel, told the boy his plans and relied on Samuel to tell others (1 Sam. 3).

Ultimately, the unjust leaders died just as God had said – and Samuel, the one who dared to say what he heard God saying, became judge in the land.

On other occasions, God:

• planned for a 90-year-old barren woman and a century-old man to birth a nation.
• deployed a boy with slingshot to defeat a giant.
• led a coward named Gideon and 300 men armed with trumpets, lantersn and empty jars to route innumerable forces from three invading nations.
• commissioned 120 people without rank, status or financial clout to change the world.

How many times have you and I dismissed uncommon strategies as make-believe?

If, instead, we’ll look for them wherever this God chooses to reveal them, if we’ll receive them as the help we’ve been seeking, uncommon strategies will carry us places – places we cannot get any other way.

© 2008, Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.