get her

This morning, I’m wondering at how God uses the most ordinary of human things to do his work.

If I were planning on how to get rid of the detested Philistines who had occupied Israel and had all the power of Almighty God, I don’t think I would have looked at the array of choices open to me and thought, “Hey, I know! I’m going to use that tendency that young men have to be stupid about women! That’ll work!”

But that’s what God did. The story starts in the first four verses of Judges 14, and it goes like this: “Samson went down to Timnah and saw there a young Philistine woman. When he returned, he said to his father and mother, ‘I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah; now get her for me as my wife.’
“His father and mother replied, ‘Isn't there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?’
“But Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me. She's the right one for me.’ (His parents did not know that this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel.)”

Samson the Nazirite, set aside from birth for God’s service, will make a fool of himself chasing a Philistine woman, and from that beginning God will use him to wreak havoc with and eventually free his people from the hated occupiers.

It amazes me. God could and did use rivers of blood and parted waters and a tempest of fire and brimstone; he even drowned the whole world. He can do all of that and more. But in this case, he cause Samson to want the wrong woman, because, as scripture tells us, he was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines.

Sometimes God chooses the most normal parts of human nature to work his purposes. I’m reminded that with God very few circumstances are about just one thing. What was passion and true love to Samson was a catastrophe to his faithful parents, but it was a salvation tactic used by God.

I have to be careful not to assume I know how God will work, and through whom. I think I miss a lot of what God does because it doesn’t look like God to me. But if verse 4 of Judges 14, that parenthetical explanation of what God was up to, wasn’t in scripture I would have missed God’s hand in this part of Samson’s story too.

So what does God at work look like? I think probably not any one thing, but maybe everything human. He used pagan kings like Nebuchadnezzar and Roman officials like Pilate to do his will, and in this case he used a young man’s lust. There isn’t anything he can’t use. So why do I assume I know what he will do?

If I watch more, and with a more open mind, I wonder what wonders of God I might see.