hard bargains

Judges 11:34-36

"When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of tambourines! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. 35 When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, 'Oh! My daughter! You have made me miserable and wretched, because I have made a vow to the LORD that I cannot break.'

'My father,' she replied, 'you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me just as you promised, now that the LORD has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites."

Jephthah's story is one of the most tragic ones in the Bible and it definitely sticks out in my mind when I think about the book of Judges. Obviously, Jephthah didn't expect that he'd be sacrificing his daughter, so it makes me think he was either:

1) Very foolish in making the oath and not thinking

OR

2) He was so devoted to God that he completely thought it was a harmless vow to make

Of those two choices, I think we'd like to accept the first because it's the easiest to swallow. But for the sake of argument, what if the real choice is the second? Why does that say about God and his relationship to those who choose to follow him?

For myself, I'd like to think I don't make foolish vows to God, but I can remember times in my life where I prayed, "God, no matter what it takes, I want my character to be more like yours. I want to grow and be a better person than I am now." Has everything that has happened to me been because I've prayed prayers like that? Could it that there's sometimes a terrible price to be paid to truly become a more faithful disciple of Christ?

I'll have to meditate on that a lot more.