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.