This week’s passage begins with God admonishing the prophet, Samuel, to be done with mourning. Some might take these words literally for themselves as an urging to get over their grief. Please go gently with this text if you are in your own season of grief, loss and mourning. Grief takes it’s own time and cannot be hurried along. As best you can, keep bringing your fresh experience of grief, of what this aching loss feels like now, into your life with God. Receive all the compassion and empathy you need in this time.
As the text continues we are given a glimpse into the way God sees things. Surely, these ways are often not our first inclination.
However and whatever the text stirs up in you this day, pause and go slowly with what you discover inside. You might allow your authentic response to be fully seen, just as it is. You are accepted and loved.
Brenda Henry shares the prayer which rose out of her heart in this gathered time of listening:
Help me to see things as you do Lord, the way you do
so that I might grow to live into the possibilities that
come about in what seems unlikely to me.
Help me to see beauty in the overlooked, hope in the forsaken, a new day for the forgotten.
Help me to hear a heartbeat where there is none, music in the dullness, birdsong always
and help me to touch the untouchables with the eyes of Your heart that always sees ours.
Amen.
1 Samuel 16:1-13 (NLT)
Now the Lord said to Samuel, “You have mourned long enough for Saul. I have rejected him as king of Israel, so fill your flask with olive oil and go to Bethlehem. Find a man named Jesse who lives there, for I have selected one of his sons to be my king.” But Samuel asked, “How can I do that? If Saul hears about it, he will kill me.” “Take a heifer with you,” the Lord replied, “and say that you have come to make a sacrifice to the Lord. Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you which of his sons to anoint for me.”
So Samuel did as the Lord instructed. When he arrived at Bethlehem, the elders of the town came trembling to meet him. “What’s wrong?” they asked. “Do you come in peace?” “Yes,” Samuel replied. “I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Purify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” Then Samuel performed the purification rite for Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice, too. When they arrived, Samuel took one look at Eliab and thought, “Surely this is the Lord’s anointed!” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
Then Jesse told his son Abinadab to step forward and walk in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, “This is not the one the Lord has chosen.” Next Jesse summoned Shimea, but Samuel said, “Neither is this the one the Lord has chosen.” In the same way all seven of Jesse’s sons were presented to Samuel. But Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” Then Samuel asked, “Are these all the sons you have?” “There is still the youngest,” Jesse replied. “But he’s out in the fields watching the sheep and goats.” “Send for him at once,” Samuel said. “We will not sit down to eat until he arrives.” So Jesse sent for him. He was dark and handsome, with beautiful eyes. And the Lord said, “This is the one; anoint him.” So as David stood there among his brothers, Samuel took the flask of olive oil he had brought and anointed David with the oil. And the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David from that day on. Then Samuel returned to Ramah.
For Prayer and Reflection:
1. Linger with any word, image, feeling, or body sense that seemed to “shimmer” for you. Sit with this and/or journal or draw whatever else seems to be emerging in you.
2. Linger with any word, image, feeling, or body sense that you felt disconnected or dissonant from/with. Consider a gentle dialogue, in whatever form you choose, (drawing, praying, writing etc.) with Jesus regarding this.