Day 139

1 Samuel 2:27-4:22, John 11:1-44, Psalms 64:1-10

The calling of Samuel is a passage that can bring us great comfort in our own journey with God. It is a story about being human, and in the Gospel we see the human said of Jesus as well.

In ch3 v19 we see that the Lord was with Samuel  and that he was attested as a prophet of the Lord. This was a great man of God and yet we see that when God called him he thought it was Eli. Even someone who was tuned into God, failed to pick up on who was speaking on this occasion. We can probably all find times when we have missed what God has been saying. Samuel was a prophet, we will come to see that he was a really good prophet, and yet he was human. I am really excited as we start to look through the story of Samuel, because we see that from these humble beginnings there really is God moving within the world through this man.

We have already seen the sons of Eli and the mistakes that they made and the start of Samuel’s career is a vision about this family. Priests who made huge mistakes in their travels with the Lord.

Jesus humanity was not centred on mistakes though, but rather revolved around friendship and love. In the story of Lazarus, Mary and Martha we see Jesus hanging around for a couple of extra days because a friend was ill (v6), he travels despite the risk to his own safety and he wept. All because of the friendship he has with this family, all because of love.

Even when we mess up like Eli’s family or when we don’t quite hear what God is saying like Samuel, we know that we are just human. We can be secure in our humanity though because Jesus shared that humanity. God as man all for our sake. That is the promise of new life that Lazarus received, and it is yours and mine today.