Samson

I asked God if he could indulge my desire to write a song about Samson. I see Samson as a sad story. He was a judge and a killer, but I think all he really wanted was to have a family like me. In that way, I feel like Samson. So strong and set apart, but at the same time so alone and yearning for something simple and fulfilling.

I don’t want to be like Samson and let my pride cause me to take God for granted. I don’t want to be like Samson and let my pride cause me to take things before their time, like when he slept with the prostitute or was with Delilah. Samson’s eyes were put out long before the Philistines removed them; he lost them when he went to the prostitute and murdered his own dream by trying to take hold of the wrong thing at the wrong time. He became blind in the spirit, and eventually, how he was in the spirit manifested on this earth. He became blind to danger, to his pride and forgot his errors in the past, and repeated the same mistake with Delilah that he did with his first wife (Timnah?), only this time it cost him his real eyes.

At the end of his life, Samson had made too many mistakes. He was past the point of family and past the point of freedom. Time, and how he wasted it with his pride had taken them away. He had his blindness, his re-growing hair, and his chains. He was in a place to do only one thing, and it fell so far short of what his life could have been. The only thing that he could do, the best that he could do, was bring that temple down, and die with it. So he finally died to himself and asked God to help him do it. It was only when Samson's spiritual blindness was brought to his attention in a grisly way and his status stripped from him as a prisoner that he was willing to do the one thing he should have done far earlier: let his pride die. Die to himself. When Samson destroyed the pillar, he wasn't just taking a temple out and killing a bunch of people in it; he was, finally, dying to himself. It was too late for that to give him what he could have had, but it was enough for him to achieve the greatest thing that he could in that final moment of his life.

And in some ways, that is the most important thing. We cannot dwell on the time we have lost. I went through a few days at sand camp and then when I asked the right question, God gave me a revelation that I wish I had discovered before I went away to sand camp. But I can't worry about how my experience might have been better if I had only done x y and z. What I have to do is ask myself, "What is the best thing I can do right now?"

Christ referred to his body as a temple. There is a verse somewhere that says something about hating oneself. I think that I am beginning to understand what that means. It does not mean "hate who you are" or "hate your body" or "hate your likes and dislikes" or "hate your personality" or "hate your calling" or any of these. What it means is, "hate your pride and everything it stands for within you". I feel like there is a connection to our bodies, which are referred to as temples, and this idea of being willing to "hate" or "die to oneself". I believe that this idea that the body is a temple is not just a physical reference, but a spiritual one as well. Christ was the only one of the face of the earth who fully hated and died to himself, and yet there was nothing about him that he should hate. He was willing to die like a criminal and accept charges against him even though they were not true. This is a divine paradox. God is all about truth and not accepting things that are incorrect. I mean, this is the same God who has told me very clearly "Praise me" and deserves it 100%. Yet, this one time, Christ was willing to take this one injustice,this one insult and apply it to himself, the one who deserved it least in the universe. He took all wisdom and nailed it to a cross, declaring that Love is greater than Wisdom.

And he did it for me.

"And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross." Colossians 2:15

"Jesus replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."
John 12:23-25