If the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are his wondrous deeds of old? As we can gather from the above response of Gideon to the angel’s greeting, the call of Gideon to be a judge and leader of his community came at a time when the fortunes of the community were dwindling on account of the people’s rebellion against the Lord. The angel’s greeting, “The Lord is with you,” was not an ordinary one, and Gideon was within his rights to question the angel. Gideon knew, (or at least he had heard) what being favored by the Lord meant. In case the angel didn’t know what he was talking about, Gideon went ahead to recount the marvelous things that had taken place in the community during those days that the Lord was indeed with the people. But those days were long gone. In place of the Lord’s favors smiling upon the community, it was all misfortunes and afflictions. Gideon attributed the endless misfortunes that had befallen their times to the absence of God in their midst. But could the God who had made a pact with them and swore to remain their God desert them? Could the same Lord who had carried them on the palm of his hand leave them to the mercy of their foes?
While it is true that the people experienced God's absence in their midst, it was not because God had “deserted” them. If the community was experiencing God’s absence to them, it was not because God had “left” them. A quick glimpse to yesterday's reading confirms this. It is the people themselves who had forgotten about their obligation to the pact they had made with God. They had forgotten about their obligation towards their God by having in their midst foreign gods, gods who could not lead them. They had turned their backs on the Lord their God and on God's commands. And when they did this, they could not be instructed by God on the way they ought to go.
We read the stories of God’s journeying with the people of Israel as part of the history of our own salvation. They are indeed stories of salvation, for they recount those numerous times when God had to reach down to a fallen people in order to "save" them. These stories are stories, not only of the infidelity of humanity, but more importantly, the stories of God's fidelity to humanity. They are stories of the “Lord being with his people.”