Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Proverbs 29:18 (06/08/23)
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TITLE: In Those Days | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
06/13/23 -
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The words of his mother, Hannah, echoed in his heart. “You’re a miracle child, a gift from God. That’s why I’m leaving you here. I promised you to him and I have to keep my promise.”
The wrinkled face of his keeper hovered in his mind. The image was strong. The bushy white beard of the old man flowed down his ample belly and over his cane. “I don’t see so well,” he told the boy. “You’ll need to lead me around and do what I tell you to do. What the God tells us to do.”
He’d looked all over the tented complex and there was no god in sight. The sons of the old man mocked and manipulated the people who came to sacrifice and it was clear they didn’t know where this god had hidden.
“Where is the god who made my mother leave me here?” he asked. “What does he say?”
The old man bowed his head and pointed toward a gold-covered box. “The word of the LORD is rare; there aren’t many visions now.”
The night passed and the first fingers of dawn painted fresh colors across the darkened canvas of the ground. The slap of a bare sole on the floor alerted him to the first bird song. The dragon of fear slithered out of his presence.
His linen ephod gave little warmth against the coolness but he tiptoed toward the old man’s quarters. A wild-eyed shepherd with a gnarled walking stick pounded the ground with the end of it. “This is what the LORD says,” the prophet said. “I promised that the members of your house would minister forever but now I will only honor those who honor me. I’m going to cut everyone’s life short so that no one reaches old age and your home will be filled with distress… I will raise up my own faithful priest who will do what is on my heart and mind.”
“What does this mean?” the boy asked.
“It’s nothing,” the old man said. “Everyone thinks they hear from the God when things don’t go their way. The only way to hear from The Almighty is to listen for his voice.”
“How will I know him?”
“Maybe you will and maybe you won’t.”
Night after night built a barricade around his hope and the boy stilled the chatter of his teeth and ignored the dampness of his pillow. Then one night, as the Lamp of God flickered low, the boy curled up in the shadow of the golden box. A whisper as gentle as a passing breeze caressed his ear. “Samuel.”
The full moon lit his pathway. He ran to the old man along its beam. “I’m here, you called me and I’m here.”
“I didn’t call; go back and lie down.”
Again, the whisper with the weight of a spider’s web touched his mind. “Samuel.”
His little soles skittered across the damp floor. “Here I am.”
“My child; I didn’t call, go back and lie down.”
And yet again. “Samuel.”
Certain now, he raced back. “I am here, you called.”
A wrinkled brow on the old man’s face. The moonlight penetrating shadows. Eyes wide open. “Lie down again. If he calls say ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.”
“Samuel! Samuel!”
“Speak, I’m listening.”
“I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle.” And so the words confirming the judgment on the old man and his family were confirmed through the whispers in the night.
The dim-eyed patriarch asked and the quivering child unveiled all that would be. “He is the LORD,” Eli said. “Let him do what is good in his eyes.”
And so, the little prophet grew up and every word came true. The times of despair and darkness withered away as the days of vision and revelation resurrected among the people. And so, it is today.
Proverbs 29:18
Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom’s instructions.
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