Scripture: Judges 13:6
Then the woman went and told her husband, “A man of God came to me, and he looked like God’s messenger—very scary! I didn’t ask him where he was from, and he didn’t tell me his name…”
Thought for the Day: The story of Samson’s birth is a fascinating story, and it includes a heavenly visitor who spoke to Samson’s mother (an important, yet one of many unnamed female characters in scripture). Some translations have the woman describing the messenger as awesome or awe-inspiring, but the Common English Translation translates the word as scary. I’m not much into thinking that God seeks to scare us. The God I meet in Jesus does not use fear as it is the antithesis of who God is. Yet the arrival of a divine messenger should be a bit frightening in the sense that it usually means something is going to change. And though the change is always for the good, the change itself and the pathway to the good can often be rough and demanding. Might it be compared to getting a call from your child’s school principal. Rarely are those calls bringing good news, though the hope is that the call produces something good in the end. On this Halloween, let’s ponder the scary in faith that is in fact something pretty amazing.
Prayer: When your message makes a dramatic appearance, O Word of Life, give me enough courage to follow its lead even when the direction causes me some discomfort. Amen.
A NEW WORSHIP SERIES
