Evening and Morning

1 Samuel 3

            The falling darkness is an underlying theme of 1 Samuel 3. We are told, “The word of the Lord was rare.” Prophecy was failing; God’s people increasingly lived with God’s silence—quite a shock after the Lord had spoken so much in the first several books of the Bible. Second, we are told that Eli’s eyes were “so weak he could barely see.” The priest himself was both literally and spiritually losing his sight, the latter reflected in his unwillingness or inability to do anything about the corruption of his sons. Finally, we are told, “The lamp of the Lord had not yet gone out.” It would, of course, be a violation of the Levitical law to let the lamps go out in the tabernacle. Rare, dim, and flickering: things looked grim for Israel. Darkness was threatening to engulf them.

            But there are indications that the dawn is coming, too. The Lord calls to Samuel. Samuel misunderstands, but blind old Eli gets it: “It’s not me. It’s the Lord.” The word of the Lord might be rare, but He still speaks and even Eli understands. And even if no one else in Israel is listening, Samuel is. Eli plays on the dark/light theme when he says that t the Lord will do what is right in His own eyes: the Lord always sees. Finally, we are told that Samuel is attested as a prophet: the word of the Lord is back in Israel. Samuel’s prophetic status is confirmed by the Lord who will not let Samuel’s words fail.

            Samuel tells us that it is a new day in Israel. After hundreds of years of falling apart, things are going to start changing for the good.

            You know, we might be tempted to think that we are in an evening time in our day and age. It certainly seems that the word of the Lord is rare. But that’s simply not the case. In hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands, of churches, the word of the Lord is preached every week. (We might wish they preached it a little more clearly, but it is preached.) The difference, I suppose, is not that the word of the Lord is rare; it’s that no one wants to hear it. A different problem. But our comfort is that the word of the Lord is still unbound and that the comfort of the Lord’s good intentions towards us are still given each and every week.