Who is Othniel?

No hate mail yet.  I sent out the video of yesterday's post and am waiting for the flak.  However, at the same time.  After I wrote it, recorded it and then sent it, I quickly went to my phone as I get a verse of the day daily and almost inevitably it has to do with exactly what I'm going through in that moment.  Sure enough, yesterday's verse was perfect, "The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid.  What can mere mortals do to me?" Ps. 118:6  I'm not exactly what I'm afraid of - people finding out that I think we, as wives, need to be more loving and less critical?!  I'm afraid to step on people's toes, I guess.  Oh well!  Too late!

On a different note, we celebrated my youngest son's 8th birthday yesterday.  I can hardly believe the "baby" of the family is 8.  The expression, "Where does the time go?" seems so cliche, but it's true - how does time go soooo fast?!  The benchmark of birthdays is so great though as it caused us last night and all throughout the day to reflect on where we were 8 years ago.  Back then we had just purchased the farm and were still carrying the other house, though it was sold, I believe.  I delivered the little guy in the tub, my first and only water birth.  I was 42 at the time and had no idea that having a baby at 42 was unusual.  I found out later that having babies past 40 is pretty unheard of and therefore it strikes me as such an amazing miracle and gift that things went so smoothly with the final two boys.  There was a least one baby after, possibly two, but neither pregnancy went further than a few weeks.

As I read a devotional with the family yesterday morning, it, too, was just so perfect.  It was about Othniel, one of the first judges in Israel.  The verse quoted was Judges 3:9-10, "When they cried out to the Lord, he raised up for them a deliverer, Othniel...Caleb's younger brother, who saved them.  The Spirit of the Lord came upon him."

The phrase that jumped out at me was "Caleb's younger brother".  God used a younger brother.  The Bible doesn't just say "brother", but specifically adds the word "younger".  That is so significant to me when I think about my son.  He is the younger brother to 7 other kids.  He will never have a younger brother or sister.  He's it.  Yet God chose Othniel.  I'm sure there were others he could have used, but He didn't.  I've read many stories of famous people who became heroes of sorts and they were often the youngest in the family.  If these young children hadn't been born, so much good in the world would not have happened, but to the world, more babies, especially the babies born in large families seem like so much more work, expense, responsibility.  Trust me, our last 2 sons were born in one of the busiest seasons of our life!  If we had thought the way the world thinks, it made NO SENSE to keep having children.  All that to say is that God had a plan for Othniel and God has a plan for my youngest, too.

There is no evidence of how Othniel was prepared.  I have no playbook for how my son is going to be prepared for what lies ahead for him.  It is interesting to think about how surely God did prepare Othniel in some way and how He'll do the same with my son.  The devotional on Othniel read like this, "God is continually preparing His heroes, and when the opportunity is right, He puts them into position in an instant.  He works so fast, the world wonders where they came from.  Dear friends, let the Holy Spirit prepare you, through the discipline of life....We must allow God to work amid our present trials and in the little victories, the future significance of which we can only imagine."

If I had looked at my oldest son's life at 8 I would never have imagined what lay ahead for him, but now that I can look back, it really was in the day to day tasks and trials that God prepared him for what he is doing now.  God has wasted NOTHING.  Everything from daily chores, cleaning bathrooms, doing laundry, helping with chickens, cows, horses, dogs and cats, has all helped prepare him.  He's had challenging trials in school and work and relationships with friends and family.  He's been pruned by us and God and in all of these situations he has become a hero to us and to others.  His work at Marineland has demanded so much of him as he has been in dangerous rescues and recoveries of animals.  I don't think he would have been able to handle all those challenges he's experienced at work without all the hardships that started at a young age.  He is who he is today because of how God used EVERYTHING to train him.  Recently we had a cat who looks like he is in a gang and is so beat up we took sympathy on him and brought him in the house to save him from his savage enemy who lurks around the house ready to kill him at any moment.  He needed medical care, bandages, and daily attention to heal.  You cannot pay me to do that.  It is way too gross and disgusting and I have too many empathetic feelings for animals to see them in such distress.  Yet, my oldest son, not only has compassion, but is able to distance himself, be objective and address the wounds without falling apart even when the cat is crying out in pain when he is changing the bandages.  We all watched him do this this week without flinching.  We all attributed this to how he'd been prepared by all his life experience around the farm and overseas this past Fall.

All this to say, I love having a large family as it allows me to see the youngest one with such different eyes.  I don't have to dread his hard experiences that are surely coming.  I don't have to be afraid.  I might have to remind myself now and then that what is coming will be difficult to watch, but it will be good for him.  It will all be a part of God's plan for him.  God will use every daily experience, every chore, all the school work, EVERYTHING, for good in his life.  It will make him into a hero in another way, I'm sure.  His name is Brock Paton.  We named him after the missionary John Paton who changed a savage cannibal nation into one that follows Christ.  We named him after General Brock who led a whole army into enemy territory and died showing unbelievable leadership skills that also changed a nation in the war of 1812.  We want him to live up to these names, but that can only come with a whole series of experiences that will prepare him.  "The Spirit of the Lord was upon him" with Othniel.  I pray the Spirit will also be upon my son and that God will "raise up" my son to be a "deliverer" of some sort as Othniel was to the Israelites.