08 May - When Life Hurts

Life can hurt sometimes, can’t it?  Friendships are slowly lost and we mourn their passing.  People don’t turn out to be who we thought they were and we are disappointed.  Our ideas aren’t welcomed the way we hoped they would be or our contributes are over looked – sometimes life can just hurt.

I’ve been reading about the life of the prophet Samuel in the Bible and reflecting on how honestly the Bible records the hurts in his own life.  Samuel is a faithful and just prophet and leader of the people but they reject his succession plan.  Samuel feels rejected but the Lord tells him, in 1 Samuel 8, that it is the Lord himself who they are rejecting. 

Later in chapter 15 we read about the last sad encounter between Israel’s first King, Saul, and Samuel.  It reads; 

“Then Samuel left for Ramah, but Saul went up to his home in Gibeah. Until the day Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul again, though Samuel mourned for him. And the LORD regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.” (v 34 – 35).

We learn in Sunday School and Sunday service all about the heroes of our faith – the way they slay giants and survive lions.  But the Bible also records the way they suffer and sin.  The way they feel disappointed and are at times disappointing.  We don’t have a legacy of legends behind us, we have an ancestry of people who are much more like us then we can imagine.  And a God so aware of it that he came and experienced it and began a process which will change us forever.

I don’t want to be scared today of the times when life hurts.  I don’t want to try to hide it from God.  Instead I want to turn to those who have walked before me, people like Samuel, and be comforted by our shared experience.  And I was to turn to God who came, through Christ, to give me a better future.  I hope that you and I today can together turn our gaze towards Jesus.