by Rola Al Ashkar

After the end of the former Lebanese President’s term in May 2014, and until October 2016, the presidential elections failed over and over again to agree on one candidate who gets the consensus of all the political parties. Lebanon was without president for 29 months… yet the country managed to survive. However for every Lebanese, it was a dark time in the history of our nation because it labeled us as people without a leader, though, if you ask me, the election of a president didn’t change much, for –in my opinion- why have a leader if he or she was not going to fight the people’s battles? Finally electing a president was not any different from having an empty presidential seat. But after all this time, the situation drove even the people who didn’t like him to say: just bring him in, give us anything just give us a president. Sad but true, maybe my people needed to read the following story from 1^st Samuel; I’ll re-read parts of it for you:

Then the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel and said to him, “appoint for us, a king to govern us, like other nations.” So Samuel reported all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards. He will take one-tenth of your grain. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. but they said “No! But we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

Very sad! Whether it is 600 years before Christ in ancient Israel, or in 2016 Lebanon, there is a common truth, and it is that people feel the need to have a ruler, in order to be real people. And what is sad about both stories is that people didn’t care whether he’s good or bad, they just wanted a leader to fight their battles! What if he was not fighting YOUR battles? What if he was fighting his personal battles?

I believe most of you know very well what it means to have a leader who is not fighting your battles.

Now here is another story that says a lot about all this; and for convenience it is placed at the very beginning of the Bible, to define once and for all the nature of human beings, and the nature of their very instinct for claiming power and control over their lives.

In one of the most famous stories in the Bible -the fall of Adam and Eve-, the couple didn’t want God to fight their battles but they wanted to fight their own, they wanted to also Abandon God’s leadership over their lives they wanted to be the gods of their own selves and the kings of their own selves. How symbolic it is that the bible declares them parents of all creation.

I heard about a captain in the airlines company I used to work for, who would enter the briefing room to say to his crew before every flight: “Once we board the aircraft, I am God.” Another captain who was considered a hero after landing the aircraft safely on a flight I was operating and in which we had an emergency and almost crashed, said to me later: “I couldn’t have done it alone. God saved the aircraft.”

Friends, it is a matter of perspective. Two men, same position, same expertise, same qualifications, one wanted to be God, to be king, to fight his battles alone, and the other didn’t want to be without God, and didn’t want anyone but God to fight his battles.

Now I ask myself and I ask you, what kind of leadership do we choose over our lives. Which perspective do we want to assume for ourselves?

To give you a glimpse on the end of the story, many chapters later in 1^st Samuel the people did regret their request for a king, but only after they’ve had loss after loss. Then they admitted, if God does not fight our battles, no one else would. Eventually, at the end of the ruling of all the kings of Israel, the entire kingdom fell, all of the kings and prophets disappeared, and the temple with all of Jerusalem were destroyed, and that marked a new epoch in the history and theology of Judaism, that’s when the Israelites learned that God is all they ever really needed.

Culture tells us every day that we need to be in control, we need to find a way; we need to have a plan, a fully detailed plan. Now of course the other extreme is to just leave the airplane on autopilot and pray that God can do something. That’s not a good choice either.

But sometimes I think that it takes losing everything, and losing the ability to control our lives to finally admit that God is in control. I knew what it took in my life to finally let God take over and fight my battles; pilot my flights. Maybe that other captain used to think he was God too, until that accident; until he actually experienced the feeling of being unable to do anything to hold that aircraft in place.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome on board this flight. Today you are given the chance to choose your own pilot, and you are offered the opportunity to BE the co-pilot. Please fasten your seat belts and let the Spirit lead us all on this wonderful journey.