On the Unimportance of Spiritual Insight

On the Unimportance of Spiritual Insight
JUDGES 5:31b- 6: 24

I have just been talking to a couple I have not seen for a year or two, exchanging news about our children and their marriages and their families. This other couple has several daughters. The last of these was almost thirty, still unattached, and was sad and worried about that. To make it worse, she had committed herself to go and work in a refugee camp for three years, where it seemed unlikely she would meet someone. Her mother told her to make a list of the qualities she was looking for in the man of her dreams, to hold it before God, and to ask God to lead this man to her or lead her to this man. This seems to me a very dangerous piece of advice, though I am all in favor of asking God for impossible things as long as you recognize that God does not grant all our prayers. But the woman did make her list, and against all odds a fellow American came to work in the same camp. . . . Well, you can work out the end of the story. She e-mailed her mother and told her that he exactly fitted the list; they are about to marry, and they will no doubt live happily ever after. Let the credits roll. Let the audience mop their eyes and leave the theatre wishing this was true for them...