On the frontline

Many of us have been praying for the Ukrainian people as we have watched daily news reports of their brave fight for the freedom of their land. Many of their soldiers are living day after day with the grim reality of the life and death struggle on the frontlines of the conflict, while for others away from those lines there is the uncertainty of unexpected bombing and missile attacks. Motivated by fierce love for their country, they persevere amid such danger, ready to lay down their lives in its defence.

Our verses for today tell of another fighter who lived many centuries ago. Shammah is described as one of King David’s thirty mighty men, valiant soldiers who did exploits in his service. The writer of 2 Samuel is careful to record that Shammah’s great victory was in the middle of a field of lentils. We don’t know whether that field was of some particular importance to Shammah, perhaps even part of his family’s inheritance, but it was sufficiently important to him to stand firm there and drive back the Philistine attackers, even when his fellow Israelite soldiers had fled and left him alone.

Christians often talk about pastors, or those involved in missionary or outreach work, as ‘being on the frontline’, but the reality is that every believer, the moment they are born into God’s kingdom, are born straight into a battle. They are now God’s children, but they are also soldiers in His army, plunged into a spiritual war that can be every bit as savage as any physical conflict. In his letter to the church at Ephesus, the Apostle Paul was writing to all believers, not just church leaders, on the need to put on the whole armour of God. Each Christian believer has their place on the frontline of the war between the powers of darkness and the Kingdom of God.

For some reading this Seed, your frontline in that war may be your everyday job surrounded by colleagues who misunderstand or even despise your faith in Jesus. For others, it could be the struggle within your marriage, your battle with ongoing sickness or physical weakness, your fight as a Christian parent seeking to bring your children up in a hostile culture, or the loneliness of being unmarried.

Serving the Lord in our ordinary lives can seem at times like being on a lonely outpost, but the ground that you stand on and the people whose lives you touch, are unique and precious to the Lord. To an onlooker, the issues that you take a stand on may seem as insignificant as a field of lentils, but, just as the Lord was with Shammah in his battle, so He is with you in yours and will give you victory.