Basket Cases

Before the transformed and on fire for Jesus Saul of Tarsus got out of Damascus things got so heated that he had to be lowered by night  through an opening in the city wall in a basket.  But, of course he was not the first person the Lord delivered from danger in a basket.  In the first chapter of Exodus there is the story of the baby Moses being placed in a papyrus basket so the waters of the river would carry him where the daughter of Pharaoh would see him.  Both of these basket cases point to the deliverance of the Lord.

 

Baskets are rather ordinary vessels.  There is nothing special about them.  But, God can use ordinary things for extraordinary purposes.  It brings to mind the old story of the man who was drowned in a flood.  When he got to heaven, he complained to the Lord about His failure to save him only to be told that he turned down both a boat and a helicopter while waiting on some miraculous event to deliver him from the rising water.  Like the man of the story we often fail to see what the Lord is doing in the midst of the ordinary because we have different expectations.

 

And, of course, when we are delivered from some danger through ordinary circumstances, or by someone who happened to be in the right place at the right time, or because some great coincidence took place, we are quick to do everything but give God the credit.  If He does not act according to the expectations of our praying, it is easy for us to miss it and falsely put the credit somewhere else.  If the Lord would choose to use baskets to deliver Saul and Moses, a close look might enable us to see we have some baskets littering our past as well.