My proposed check on abusive police powers in Chattanooga Is a weak vessel indeed, A mere use of words telling cops that they can’t keep doing as they have against innocent people on the roads for 80 years.

But often God uses weak and shriveled things to accomplish His will, whether it is in judgment against a people, or in the starting of their liberation from a judgment or oppressor.

In the book of judges the Children of Israel are in bondage to the Philistines. They have a deliverer. Samson is a great man with huge weaknesses, mostly of pride and sins of the flesh. In an ear to y exploit, this man who judges Israel 20 years uses a filthy part of a carcass, the jawbone of an donkey, to kill 1,000 Philistines as “the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him” (Judges 15:14).

And God does not ordain that he use the jawbone of a lion so that he might magnify himself, as this judge and prophet is prone to do. He uses a part of a carcass of a despicable animal. Israelites are commanded not to touch any dead thing, which Samson dioes more than once. As a Levite, he is under even more stringent sets of separating commandments.

But with great power, using a weak instrument, he works on the first steps of liberating the people. “The child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistine,” his parents are told.

It’s my prayer that God will use weak instruments, such as transportation administrative notice — mere words on paper — to begin delivering Tennesseans from their oppressor. We must, starting in the following jurisdictions, just take it in hand, and wield it. These are: Cities of Chattanooga, Red Bank, East Ridge and counties of Hamilton and Rhea.

Reform starts here. It starts today.

The jawbone of an ass.