Today's Scripture Reading (April 2, 2022): 1 Samuel 8
We tend to see the world around us as we expect it
should be and not
as it is. It is one of the reasons why tradition has such a great hold on us. It
is hard to see the world outside of our expectations. If you think the world is
evil, you will
put on dark tinted glasses and see the world in that way, allowing the glasses to magnify
everything negative that happens. If we think the world is a beautiful
place, then we put on our rose-colored glasses, enabling them to amplify the world's beauty. But what we see is usually based on what we expect.
As far as the church is concerned, I freely admit
that I have blind spots. I often see what we do as I expect they should be. And I often
struggle with trying to build something "outside the box." I have never been able to figure out why adults
would want to color as an expression of their worship or any of the other, to
me, more radical, expressions of worship. I also have no
idea why we would want to read the lyrics of the hymns or sacred songs rather
than singing them, and yet I know of ministries who do exactly that. My
expectations shade my perception.
Samuel was a judge. He expected that Israel was designed to run in a particular way. It ran with the help of Judges who God called to protect the nation. But beyond that, Israel was
a very free place to live. The Judges of the Bible tended to be episodic in practice. Israel did not always have a
Judge who would help govern her affairs, and sometimes two or three regional Judges led the nation simultaneously.
A Judge was not a title that was passed down from
father to son, and yet that is precisely what Samuel had tried to do. Rather
than being raised up by God, Joel and Abijah had been handed the reigns of
Israel simply because they were the sons of Samuel. Maybe Samuel believed that
was okay because he had essentially grown up in the house of Eli, and even
though he was not related to Eli by blood, when Eli died, he was the logical successor to the title of Judge
of Israel. But while Joel and Abijah carried their father's genes, they did not receive their father's integrity or close relationship with God. And so, the people desired a change.
The people looked at the world around them and
noticed that most of the nations were led by kings. Surely, since kings ruled most of the other countries, it must be a better way. Samuel looked at Israel and
believed that it needed to be led by Judges as it always had been. And he
couldn't imagine it any other way.
If Joel and Abijah had led the nation with more integrity, the move to a king might not have happened during the life of
Samuel. But Samuel's
sons had led Israel into corruption, so the people demanded a change. In the end, some of the kings of Israel would be just as corrupt, or even more corrupt, than Joel and Abijah, a result that Samuel had predicted. But from the people's point of view and
expectations, it seemed to be a better
way.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 9
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