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November 2006, Page 1.
Index of articles:
by subject,
by date.
In this issue:
(November 2006)
Be strong,
Remember me,
Don't wanna job,
Power of prayer?
Be strong and courageous
As the school term gets underway each year, I ask the school staff for guidance about what subjects they’d like me to cover in collective worship (which used to be called “assembly”). This year, for some reason, the topics were: trust, special people, and having courage. I was invited to choose various characters from the Old Testament to illustrate them.
Well, that’s not hard. I chose Abraham, Saul, David, Joshua and Elijah. But actually, I could almost have chosen anyone in the whole book! Almost everywhere you look in the Old Testament, there’s a main character who has a real personal experience of God and through it realizes that God has chosen him/her for some particular task. Usually the task involves stepping out into the unknown and having to exercise trust that God will make things work out right, and more often than not the person feels rather daunted by what is coming. There’s the inevitable challenge in all of their lives about whether they will have courage to follow God’s leadings, or whether they’ll “bottle out” in some way.
I wonder why the Old Testament is so full of these stories? Could it be that God knew they would be relevant for later generations? Could God be trying to tell us something for our age too?
The saddest character of the five I chose was Saul. He was chosen (over Samuel’s misgivings - 1 Sam 8:22) when the people craved a king, for the Philistines were terrorizing the land. Saul was told to gather the army and await God’s further instructions in 7 days’ time (1 Sam 10:8).
But a week later the Philistines are again on the attack, and Saul is desperate to get moving before the army melts away - so he jumps the gun (1 Sam 13:8), does the sacrifice without Samuel, consecrates the army, and orders the attack. “You’ve shown that you don’t trust God”, says Samuel, “and God wants leaders after his own heart. Your kingdom will not endure.”
Why would God choose Saul only to change his mind the next week and choose David instead? Is it to show us that God has plans for us, but they really do depend on our trusting him?
In the modern age we have social security, pensions, technology, ... and they sometimes make us think we’ve evolved beyond having to trust God. I wish I could promise you a trouble-free existence with no need to worry about what the future might bring. But I can’t.
Instead, the Old Testament is a picture of our day. We still live in an age of insecurity. We still hear God calling to each one of us to do tasks for him. Will we trust God and be courageous?
John Hartley