A Year Through God's Eyes

It is becoming more and more common around my house to hear this title statement. It can pertain to a myriad of different tasks: getting dressed, getting undressed, on and off the potty, in the tub, over the dog's gate, closing and opening doors, turning off the TV, you get the picture. This statement doesn't generally come from me or my wife, but from our strong-willed 3-1/2 year old. There are also several instances when she will utter the phrase and she can't really accomplish the task she has set for herself without some parental intervention. When these rare cases do crop up, and she completes her task with my help it has happened where she looks at me and says in no uncertain terms, "I told you I could do it by myself!"
Once this exchange takes place, my gut tells me that she's being very childish which is fine because she's a child, but before I go off and toot my superiority horn (it's red and blue and glittery), I must not forget that I treat God like this almost daily. Not only that, but so did the Israelites: I present Gideon, reluctant Judge and leader of the Israelite army. As the curtain rises on our scene, we see that Gideon has managed to amass a decent sized army of his brethren (32,000 or so) to take on an army whose members were "as thick as locusts" and whose camel cavalry was "too numerous to count." Looking out at the people he's about to fight, Gideon can't like his chances all that much, but he knows they're the best his nation has to offer and he might have even tossed up a prayer that heart and courage would win the day over numbers and training, and God answers his prayers...
Although not the way Gideon was hoping God looks at Gideon's group and says, "this isn't me-sized enough for me, you'll think you did this on your own (sound familiar?), so send away the ones that are afraid." While Gideon certainly can't be comfortable with this idea, he trusts that his men are manly and would relish the opportunity to split a few wigs, so he does what God asks (although he probably put some mocking inflection into his voice on the word "scared"). To his dismay, once the first guy leaves (probably to a few catcalls), he is quickly followed by 22k of Gideon's mighty force. So once Gideon has finished wetting his pants, he thinks "surely God's going to have to do a miracle here, because we can't do this!" So, Gideon probably shoots up another prayer: "O Lord, please win this battle for us. Your faithful servant, Gideon." God answers his prayer again...
And again, not the way Gideon was hoping. If you're thinking the point to this story is "don't pray to God," you'd be wrong. Let's keep going and find the point. God says "Those guys look hot from sweating out how they're going to pull this off, let them go get some water from the spring." When Gideon gets them there, they fall into two camps: Those who do cannon balls into the water, and those who ask for a Dixie cup. Well, wouldn't you know it, God says to take the Dixie cup gang into the battle. These guys number around 300 (different 300!) and God sees them and says, "that's me-sized enough. I'm going to take these 300 and win the battle for you Gideon." So the point of the story is this: God will put His blessing on a few things in this world, but He seems to hold an extra-special blessing when obedience and reliance on Him and not on man work together.

PRAYERS:
A home for my family
To do my job to the best of my abilities
Traveling mercies for me, Kayla, and Brenna
To be aware of witnessing opportunities.