The Name You Haven't Grown Into Yet

In 1961, a young attorney named Thurgood Marshall sat in his small office in New York, preparing yet another civil rights brief, when he received a phone call from the White House. President Kennedy wanted to appoint him to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Marshall reportedly hesitated — he was a litigator, a scrapper from Baltimore who had argued cases in hostile Southern courtrooms where his life was genuinely in danger. He didn't see himself as a judge. But Kennedy saw something Marshall hadn't yet claimed about himself. Six years later, Marshall became the first Black justice on the Supreme Court.

When the angel of the Lord found Gideon, he was threshing wheat in a winepress — a cramped, hidden space meant for crushing grapes, not harvesting grain. Gideon was hiding from the Midianites who had stripped Israel bare for seven years, devouring every crop and animal until God's people were hollowed out with hunger. And into that fearful crouching, the angel spoke words that must have sounded absurd: "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior."

Not "The Lord sees your potential." Not "You could be mighty someday." The angel named Gideon as what God had already decided he was.

This is the rhythm of Judges — El Shaddai reaching into the lowest places of Israel's cycle of despair and calling frightened people by names they haven't grown into yet. He speaks finished identity over unfinished lives.