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.

When God is Impatient

Have you ever watched someone you love deeply suffer? Has your heart ever been shredded by the pain of those you care about? Have you reached that breaking point where you can’t take it anymore and you stop at nothing to bring relief to that person, no matter the cost to you (and then there are those agonizing times when there is absolutely nothing you can do to ease their suffering)? Did you know that’s how God feels about the suffering of His people? When you hurt, He hurts. It grieves Him to see you suffer. He feels that tortured, restless impatience that you’ve felt when your spouse or child or close friend was in pain (even if the pain/painful circumstance was partly their own fault). Take some time to think about this passage in Judges 10.

Judges is a dark book. A book where it seems that all God’s people do is forsake Him and all He does is bring judgment again and again. By the time you get to Judges 10, we are already several cycles into this idolatry-judgment-repentance-rescue paradigm. Once again, Israel has walked away from God and is worshipping idols. God uses the Philistines and Ammonites to “crush and oppress” the Israelites. They are “severely distressed,” and they recognize that their suffering has come because they “have forsaken our God.” They ask God for help, and He reminds them that they were the ones who discarded Him in favor of other gods. He tells them to go ask their new gods for help. The people respond to God by saying, “We have sinned; do whatever seems good to You. But please deliver us.”

Now think about it. This cycle has already happened multiple times. Israel has a track record: a track record that shows that as soon as they are not in distress, they abandon God again. Frankly, they are not really deserving of help/rescue. They have brought suffering on themselves. What is God’s response towards them at this point? The text says, “and He became impatient over the misery of Israel.” Another translation puts it, “His soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel.” Wow. God is moved by the pain of His people. He feels their hurt. It affects Him. Reader, God is easily moved to compassion by your misery. God sees what’s hurting you, and it sits heavily on Him too. His love moves Him to act on your behalf. He is not indifferent to your need for rescue and comfort.

This truth shows up in the prophets too. God will talk about “waiting a long time” to bring rescue to His people, “but now I will cry out…I will lay waste mountains…I will lead the blind…I will turn darkness to light…” He gets to this point where He will move heaven and earth to come to the aid of His people. The same way you do when you can’t stand the suffering of the people you care about. And the sweet thing is, although we are often helpless in the face of our loved ones’ pain, He never is. He is always able to act. So take heart. He sees and knows; He feels your grief with you, and He will act on your behalf.

Good Friday Poem

Good Friday

     George Herbert

O my chief Good,
How shall I measure out thy blood?
How shall I count what thee befell,
And each grief tell?

Shall I thy woes
Number according to thy foes?
Or, since one star show'd thy first breath,
Shall all thy death?

Or shall each leaf,
Which falls in Autumn, score a grief?
Or cannot leaves, but fruit be sign
Of the true vine?

Then let each hour
Of my whole life one grief devour:
That thy distress through all may run,
And be my sun.

Or rather let
My several sins their sorrows get;
That as each beast his cure doth know,
Each sin may so.

Since blood is fittest, Lord to write
Thy sorrows in, and bloody fight;
My heart hath store, write there, where in
One box doth lie both ink and sin:

That when sin spies so many foes,
Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes
All come to lodge there, sin may say,
'No room for me', and fly away.

Sin being gone, oh fill the place,
And keep possession with thy grace;
Lest sin take courage and return,
And all the writings blot or burn. 

A Love Story: Told in Two Parts

 Part One

Sappy post alert!

I know they say that no guy is perfect, but mine is. He is literally everything I dream about and long for. I’m trying to come up with a way to put into words how amazing he is. He’s this incredible balance of gentle and rugged – like, really make-your-heart-pound fierce and dissolve-your-insides understanding and intuitive. He’s a good listener and a good communicator. He knows how to say things to me in a way that shows that he “gets me” perfectly. It’s like he’s memorized me from the inside out and knows exactly how to connect with me, no matter what the situation is. 

It doesn’t hurt that he’s attractive. Strong. Energetic. Smart. (Don’t even get me started on how smart he is! I admire his perspective and grasp on life, people, work, science, history, literature, politics, etc. He. Is. Smart.) Witty. Confident. I respect him more than anyone else I know; I absolutely adore him. He’s one of those people who could have had anyone they wanted, and he chose me. Sometimes I feel like I am living a fairy tale life: I got the prince. He is the epitome of everything good and desirable in a lover. My needs – all of them – are completely met. (Like, think through your life and everything that you wish your significant other would be/do/know for/about you, and then hear me when I tell you that he is there in all of those ways for me.) I love his hands…and his voice. (I told you this was a sappy post!) He tells me/makes me feel like I’m enough for him and that I bring him pleasure too (though I know that, hands down, I’m the lucky one in this relationship). I can’t tell you what it’s like to lay down with him at night and wake up beside him every morning. It’s heaven. 

I never imagined it could be this good. 

Part Two

Everything that I told you about him is true. It’s all true and more, way more, than I could tell. But our story is more complicated than that. At this point, I need to tell you that I’m an addict, a user. So even though I literally have it all with him, I have this relentless, destructive habit of cheating on him. 

He knows it too. He’s caught me making out on the park bench with a coworker. He’s come home in the middle of the day and found me in bed with a friend from church (I know; the irony isn’t lost on me). He knows that I got a hotel room with a college buddy when I was up north for my grandma’s funeral. And like I said, he knows me inside out, so he can tell when we’re at the restaurant, and I start scoping out the room. Or when we’re hanging out together, but I’m actually replaying memories of other men in my brain or slipping into the restroom to text. Or when we’re in the middle of a really meaningful conversation and I start planning my outfit for when I sneak out later. Sometimes he makes love to me and even though I know that if I responded to his advances he could make me deliriously happy, I just ignore him because I’m on Facebook or whatever, and the thought of being with him doesn’t appeal to me enough to make me put down my phone. 

I’m kinda saying this all really casually. It’s not that I don’t feel any shame. I do. But the reality is that this has all happened so many times that it’s almost old hat. I used to freak out whenever I acted out on my cravings for other lovers, but I’ve come to realize that it’s who I am. I wish I was a better wife to him (he deserves so much better!), but I’m just not the person I thought I was back when we got married. I’m a user. That’s the way it is. The plain old hat reality.

Here’s what’s not old hat, though, and here’s the reason I’m telling you our story: he takes me back. Every. Time. He takes me back. Do you know that nothing that I’ve done has changed who he is and his faithfulness to me? He knows everything about me, and he still takes me back. Still welcomes me into his arms. Still speaks the words he knows I need to hear. He truly loves me with his whole heart, and I see a hauntingly infinite grief in his eyes every time I walk away from him yet that hasn’t stopped me from walking away. But as he takes me back, time after time, something is starting to happen. It’s starting to sink in that he’s always known that I am this horrible person. He knew it when he chose me and married me. 

I was the oblivious one. I was so blind and deceived. I used to think that he was awesome, and I was almost as awesome. But it’s not that way at all. He’s so much more than I ever imagined back when we first met, and I first responded to his love, and I’m far worse than I ever knew in my moments of greatest clarity and honesty. I’ve begun to see that, and I’m beginning to be able to talk about it now. 

I’m realizing that I have nothing to lose: I don’t have to be proud and try to patch up my image. I don’t have to be in denial. I don’t have to hide or lie: to him, to myself, to anyone. I am who I am. And he is who he is. He’s faithful. He’s forgiving. He’s unchanging. He’s committed to me no matter what because he already knew me when he married me, and he determined to endure the worst of my betrayal and darkness and spite himself. So he takes me back. Every time. He loves me. 

And it’s this incredible heartbroken, unchanging love of his that’s starting to do something to do me. It’s starting to free me. To free me from using. From using life and everything in it to try to fill me up. I’m starting to realize that I can’t fill myself or fix myself or anything. I’m starting to realize how much I need him. I’m learning to see and to embrace that he decided to sacrifice himself for my good, my humbling, my cleansing, my healing, and my transformation, and that if I accept that – accept him – I can be satisfied. I can live out the satisfaction in him that he means for me to experience, but it won’t be all about my satisfaction and my needs being met; it will be all about him. He will be everything. 

It’s kinda like the sappy post that I started off with, except that was about what I got from him (and it’s true, I do get all that from him), but I’m learning now: it’s not about getting. It’s about all of me responding to all that he is – that’s what shows how magnificent he really is. When he can take someone like me and over time, by the sheer weight of his relentless love, transform her into an adoring, faithful wife who sees both herself and him as we both really are, that really displays his greatness. So, this is our love story. It’s actually the story of his love for me, and do know you? We will live happily ever after.

(Written by Kaycee Rider; shared with permission.)

Thoughts from a Shepherd-Heart

One of my friends wrote these thoughts several years ago. It seems to me to be a beautiful portrait of a shepherd's heart, and I found that it well expressed my heart for the people God has given me to care for.

"Every now and then, when I reach out to one of my people, I get a surprised response, as though that one believed he or she had been forgotten. 

Such would not be possible, for my heart lives among my people. In the empty spaces of my life, my mind flies to one...or another...or another. And the full spaces of my life are ever filled by them. 

I revel in their triumphs. 

I ache for their setbacks. 

I strategize for their benefit. 

In the early morning, in the dead of night, and continuously in between, my energies, my resources, my talents, my thoughts, my plans, my dreams, and all my love is toward them."  - K. C. Giroux

Saying "Yes" to God

The following quotation is directed specifically to missionary work, but I would argue that the reality expressed actually applies to the Christian life/following God as a whole. Plainly stated, Christians are those who say "yes" to God.

"I believe the one thing that keeps young people from the mission field today is this reality of sacrifice. It seems harder and harder for young men and women to commit to being missionaries now unless they grow up in a family or a church where they are taught the importance of missions from an early age. Perhaps there needs to be more emphasis on the concept of sacrifice, not to scare people away, but to instill in our youth the importance of doing without the comforts of America in order to minister to those in need of Christ. A successful missionary need not live in the most uncomfortable of situations. What is most important is that the missionary makes the decision, before ever reaching the field, that he or she will never say no to God, no matter what He asks."
 - One Candle to Burn, Kay Washer, pg. 151