In our continuing story from the first
book of Samuel that we've been hearing for over a week, we hear Samuel today
confront Israel's King Saul for having disobeyed God's orders in attacking the
Amalekites. According to God’s command, Saul
was to utterly destroy them & to not spare anything, but Saul and his men
took King Agag hostage, saving the best of the spoils for themselves, including
sheep & cattle. Saul uses the excuse
that they wanted to use the best animals to make a sacrifice to the Lord,
rationalizing that they had a good reason to disobey the Lord's orders. Their reasoning does not make a lot of sense
– disobeying the Lord in order to give offerings to the Lord - but this is how
Saul explains their actions. Samuel
tells Saul that his actions show that he has rejected God, so God, in turn,
will reject Saul as king of Israel.
In some ways, today's reading from the
first book of Samuel might be asking us to examine our own hearts, to look at
ways that we have disobeyed not only God's commandments, but at the ways we
have rejected what God is calling us to do in our lives. We may think of many reasons to justify our
actions, but are we blindly disobeying God in our lives and not listening to
what he is calling us to do? As
followers of Christ, God holds us accountable when we directly disobey
him. We are never going to be perfect,
but we are called to strive toward perfection, we are called to practice virtue
in our lives, to grow in the cultivation of holiness, to try to live the faith
that we profess.
May we thank God for the many blessings
he has given us in our lives. May we
look for ways to discern the will of God for us, & pray for the courage to
implement his will.
No comments:
Post a Comment