My lectio divina this morning was on 1 Samuel 7:5-13. It’s already a favorite passage of mine as it’s the passage about the Ebenezer stone. (You may remember a blog a few years back concerning my own “Ebenezer stones” which mark and remind me of God’s movements in my own life.) And the guided reflection (it’s an intro to lectio divina book) focused on the stone and on remembering God’s works…
… but something else really struck me, earlier on, in verse 8. I guess it’s because in the daily Bible audio we’ve gone through Exodus and Leviticus and are now in Numbers…. so I keep hearing Israel over and over again complaining – that the Egyptians will kill them, that they’ll die in the desert, that enemies and the people of Canaan will get them (not to mention all the food and water complaints)…
So verse 8 stuck out. We tend to picture Israel as always faithless and sinning and complaining and doubting. (And to be honest, though it seems to happen often, they are not constant in such things and we are not as far removed from them as we like to think!) Here they had sinned again and their enemies had defeated them (and had taken the Ark – which has just been returned before this passage) so Samuel calls for repentance. And they do!
And as they are repenting and sacrificing the Philistines come up against them. Only this time it wasn’t a “woe is us – we’re doomed!” response. It was more “Samuel, please continue to pray so that God will rescue us.”
It’s a subtle difference really. So look again.
Verse 8: “Do not stop crying out to the LORD our God for us, that he may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines.”
“That he may rescue us.”
As if they actually believed he could and would! This stood out sharply to me.
Oh that I would believe. Oh that I would have an attitude of repentance and prayer and belief rather than giving into complains and fears and doomsday visions!
[…] mentioned my Ebenezer hands in a previous post. And I’ve been wanting to review all the stones, so thought I’d let you share in my […]