The Mundane Ways of God: Samson's story, Part 1

Two of my friends and I have agreed to read Judges once a week for the next two months. I’ve been through the book about four times now and am seeing more of God and His ways in the lives of His people! Judges 13-16 gives the account of Samson, and I wanted to share some of the things that I’m noticing throughout the whole book as they show up in the life of this particular judge. The same Divine patterns show up in the lives of Gideon, Abimelech, and even Micah and the tribe of Benjamin (two startling and disturbing accounts recorded at the end of the book of Judges), but we'll watch them unfold in Samson's story, and then you can read Judges and see the themes unfold elsewhere for yourself!

The Ways of God in the Life of Samson (and Most of Human History)

Please take time to at least open up your Bible or Bible app and glance through Judges 13-16, so you get a feel for the text and can pick up on the textual references that I’ll be making.

The account of Samson begins like this: “And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord gave them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years.” Forty years. 40. Two generations were born and raised with this as their reality. Bondage to the Philistines was the status quo for forty years. Well, at some point during those years, one barren woman in the tribe of Dan gets a visit from the angel of the Lord. The angel tells her that she is going to have a son who will be dedicated to God and who will begin to rescue Israel from the Philistines. That’s a big deal: definitely a life-changing (and a nation-changing) event. And soon, just like the angel said, a son, Samson, was soon born to this woman and her (somewhat flaky?) husband Manoah.

But while it’s true that a visit from an angel may change your life in an instant, the reality is that everyday life still unfolds one day at a time, and even the most colorful of lives have their share of the mundane. That’s just how life on earth was designed to work. The eternal God has ordained that we live out our lives with a certain cadence: eating, sleeping, working, aging. Life is lived by minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Seasons come and go, and for the most part, there’s no way to speed up their arrival or their passing. We are bound by time. There is a natural course of life that God has set in place, and we cannot thwart it. God, however, is not time-bound, and therefore rarely acts on the schedule that we think He should. Some of our greatest struggles with God rise from this timing disjunction, and when we read Scripture, sometimes we miss the fact that the people in these historical accounts experienced many of the same time-tensions and much of the same mundaneness that we do. The text alludes to these things so briefly and matter of factly that we hardly register how refreshingly and comforting familiar it is.

What happened next in Manoah's family? “And the young man grew, and the Lord blessed him.” And just like that, the text captures the passage of years. A baby is promised and born. A baby that God has said will begin to rescue Israel from the oppressive Philistine regime. But...that baby has to grow up before it can do anything. And so Samson went through his toddler years and went to school and became a teenager. And for all intents and purposes, nothing was happening. The Philistines were still making life hard for Israel. We don’t hear about any other visits from angels or any other major revelations. Life just keeps happening. Diapers are changed. Meals are cooked. Gardens are tended. Clothes are outgrown. Loved ones die and are buried. Babies are born. Farmers plow. Smiths forge tools. Carpenters craft furniture. Weavers spin wool and make cloth. Shepherds tend sheep. Much of life feels insignificant. The moments that feel significant are few and far between. That’s the way it is. And we often find it easy to chafe at this perceived insignificance, to feel trapped in these endless time-warps. But Judges reminds us that the passage of time in mundane cadences (even under difficult circumstances) is part of the ways of God. He is unhurried. He is not reactive. He simply is. He is the God who works wonders (as Manoah and his wife noted), the God who makes lavish promises and who freely to fulfills His promised purposes in His time. He doesn’t withhold good gifts. He is purposeful, wise, and generous. He is not like us.

To us, the grind of life often feels hard, doesn’t it? It can be painful. But it’s OK that the ways of God sometimes fall hard on us, and we struggle to accept what He is doing. God knows this about us; He remembers that we are dust. And He has told us that righteous people live by faith. He wants us to trust Him.

Friend, hold onto the truth about who God is and His heart for His people in your time of waiting and mundaneness. We are all in the middle of His Story, and every story has dark times, weary stretches, hazards, and hurt. It’s OK to be struggling in the middle of your story. Because of Jesus, all will end well. Cling to hope.

We’ll look at the next section of Samson’s story in an upcoming post.

The Far Kingdom

Gusting winds roll the maple leaves, flashing their silver undersides. Sunlight and shadows play in the blue-skyed afternoon, and the birds chirp out their pleasure at the whole scene. 

I sit in the car, treasuring the few minutes of solitude, wishing to talk to God, yet quivering with that inside exhaustion that makes it difficult to do more than just stare. These days of battle blur together; they live heavily yet pass quickly, leaving the past hidden under a dust-cloud while a deep fog hangs over future. The war can be relentless; the days grueling. And sometimes, in the middle of it all, the outcome feels murky and uncertain. Except for one thing. 

There is one thing that not even the battle-haze can completely obscure: the Far Kingdom. It is visible even here in the raging present. There are promises. There is a river. There is a city of God. There is a King, and there is a Kingdom. And though everything else crumbles around us, we as believers have received a Kingdom that cannot be shaken (Heb. 12). The promises of God cannot fail. God cannot lie. So here in my car, in the middle of the battle, with all its noise, danger, and exhaustion, I will pause to look up for a glimpse of the King and the Kingdom. I will remember that I have been given two solid realities: today and the Final Day: a Now and a Forever. Everything that lies between these two realities must be taken in by faith. 

O God, give me courage to live today. Help me to look up, to see the Far Kingdom, to ride into battle with the joy of faith, to believe that every sword-stroke leaves its mark, that every wound works a weight of glory, and that nothing will be wasted. In Your love, grant me this grace as You have promised.

(I would be remiss and less than generous if I didn't share this jewel of a song with you: Far Kingdom. It has helped me for many weeks now. Click the link. Listen to it. And while you are at it, also listen to Shadows of the Dawn by the same artist, The Gray Havens.)

God Who Works Wonders

The account of Samson: such a fascinating, complex narrative. God is at work doing surprising things: using people that we would never use to get our work done, letting His purposes reach His people via the winding trails of their own sins and failings. And although He does judge those sins and expose those weaknesses, as we read the Biblical account, we find that His people are never at the mercy of their weaknesses. He is always quietly in control, accomplishing His work with daunting precision and giving grace in unexpected, generous ways. He rescues His people again and again in ways that we never saw coming.

Here are two notes on the first part of the life of Samson:

1) The first is a simple meditation on a name of God that appears in the narrative.

Following the second announcement of the angel of the LORD (Judg. 13), Manoah offers a sacrifice to “Yahweh who works wonders.”

Take that in. Turn it over in your heart and mind. Ask yourself: What is your impossible request right now? What situations sit on your heart like a 160 lb. weight? Where does the hurt cut so deep the healing seems beyond reach? Friend, He is the One who works wonders. He can do anything. Take this truth about Him: admire it, treasure it, feed on it. “Yahweh, the One who works wonders.”

2) The second note offers an example of the LORD working a wonder in Samson’s life.

Judges 15 – And Samson was very thirsty, and he called upon the LORD and said, “You have granted this great salvation by the hand of Your servant (he had just killed 1000 of Israel’s enemies), and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore the name of it was called En-hakkore (“the spring of the one who called”); it is at Lehi to this day.

Amazing, isn't it? Just like that – because one of his thirsty children cried to Him – “God split open the hollow place” and made a new stream that flowed for years to come. 

Reading this account reminded me of the passage in Isaiah where, hundreds of years later, God promises to provide water for His people in their time of need.

Isaiah 41 – When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.

No idle words, this promise. God has already shown His ability to do this on behalf of one of His own. So take heart, believer. God is the kind of God who intervenes in His children’s lives.

In pondering the Samson account in conjunction with the Isaiah passage, I found two things particularly encouraging:

* God did this miracle for Samson (a struggle-laden judge, at best: God's care is not dependent on our performance!).

* He did it in answer to Samson’s request (you don’t have because you don’t ask).

This God is our God. He is the One who works wonders. We are the ones who call out. In what ways do we sell God short? What things do we not even ask for because it’s not on our radar screen, because we don’t even think about the fact that if we asked, God might actually do something for us? He’s the kind of God who responds to the needs of His people.

So…ask.

Just ask.

Ask this God who works wonders.