Month: February 2023

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

2 Corinthians 12:9 (RSV)

If there was a reel of video images playing back our entire life, it would consists of a series of moments. We cannot recall every detail that happened in our life but we do have a collection of moments stored in the treasury of our minds and hearts. Days, weeks, months and years are condensed into key moments. We have childhood moments that we treasure, memories spent with siblings, cousins and old friends. We remember the sacred moments of our last goodbye to a beloved friend or loved one. We cherish the joyful moment of first meeting a new born addition to our family.

Whether moments bring laughter or tears, they are the moments that compose the playback video entitled “Your life.” I remember a moment in my life when I was so sick with a virus while I had four month old twin babies to care for. My husband was on strike but had an obligation to his union to go to the picket line that day with the others who were striking. No one was available to help with the babies and I was too sick and weak to care for them that day, so he took them with him to the picket line.
I packed diapers and bottles and he took them in a twin stroller for a few hours as he took it all to the picket line, while I was able to rest at home. A newspaper reporter who was covering the strike, came by and took a picture of him with the twins in the stroller and the local newspaper article the next day read, “Striker does double duty on picket line.”

It was a memorable moment, and we were all amused. Not every key moment in life makes it to the newspaper, but in every moment, we give Jesus the steering wheel of our lives. We trust Him to calm the storms that come, and we proclaim Him Lord of our life through sickness and health, through the best and the worst of times.
There have been moments where we win battles over sin and moments where we lose, with moments of rebellion followed by moments of repentance. If we reviewed the moments of our lives, some will make us laugh and some will make us cry, some with cause a sense of achievement and others a sense of shame. Our faith waxes and wanes through the different storms of life, but we always pick ourselves up again and keep moving forward, because God’s grace and strength is perfected through our weaknesses.

It is those redemptive moments that secure our confidence to keep coming back to God.
Everything in the video of our life that is summed up in this combination of moments, is a brief flashback compared to eternity that we will spend with Jesus. We were created to live eternally, and our present life is the time we are given to live out the key moments from this day onward, in a state of grace.

Lord, thank you for your grace in giving us time and a fresh start to try again and do better, in living every moment for your glory. Amen

“The lamp of God was not yet extinguished, and Samuel was sleeping in the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was.

The Lord called to Samuel, who answered, “Here I am.”

1 Samuel 3:3-4 (NAB)

I love the story of Samuel, the little boy who was dedicated to the temple by his mother, Hannah. It’s a story usually told to children about a little boy who hears the call of God while he is sleeping. The story of Samuel has a lot to say about a grieved heart, both the heart of God and the heart of a parent. Hannah had a grieved heart until God answered her prayer and gave her a son. The high priest Eli had a grieved heart over his irreverent sons. God’s heart is also the heart of a parent, and He becomes grieved over sin. We can learn from Samuel to tune ourselves in to what grieves God.
There are many details in this story that are never told to children. The high priest, Eli, raising Samuel in the temple, and preparing him for priesthood, had two adult sons who were priests. Being a very passive father, Eli’s two sons grew up to disrespect God, and abuse their office of the priesthood with bribery, sexual promiscuity and greed. They brought shame to their office, to their father and to God. Eli begged his sons to reform but he never had the courage to remove them from the priesthood.

God was very grieved over their wickedness and planned to raise up Samuel to be a priest after His own heart. While Samuel was still a boy, learning the roles and rituals of priesthood from Eli, one day God spoke directly to him. He called his name out in the middle of the night, waking him up out of his sleep. After the third time Samuel heard his name called, he answered “Hineni”, meaning “Here I am”, in Hebrew. Then God revealed His heart to Samuel, explaining that He was going to remove the two evil sons of Eli and cut their lives short. Samuel went and reported all the words of the Lord to Eli.
This was the beginning of Samuel’s personal relationship with God. He grew up to understand what grieved the heart of God as well as what pleased Him, leading Samuel to become an intimate friend with God. Jesus called us His friends, not slaves or servants. If we were meant to have friendship with God, then friends share their joys as well as their sorrows with one another. This would mean that Jesus wants to share his joys with us, but He also wants to share what grieves Him.

Other faiths do not believe we can have friendship with our Creator, but rather believe men are only servants of God, but Christianity is clear that we are called into a friendship with God, our Father. Jesus said in John 15:15, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” God desires to share what is on His heart with us, just as He did with young Samuel.

Friends listen to each other, sharing joy and grief. It’s a two way communication that Jesus wants to have with us as well. We are all sinners like Eli’s sons, but we have been washed and cleansed in the precious blood of Jesus, renewed by His Spirit, and adopted as children of His Father.  The friendship Samuel had with God is offered to us through Jesus.

The same Spirit that dwelled with Samuel, dwells in us and is there when we sleep and when we wake up. He has things to say and share with us. Lord, help us to shut off all the outside noises, so we might hear what you are saying, and we can answer like Samuel, “Hineni, Here I am, speak Lord, I am listening.”