Devotion - Tuesday, August 16

This morning I was reading from Judges 13.  There we learn the stories of Samson's birth.  His parents have had no previous children.  The wife is visited, and told she will conceive and bear a son.  She is told to eat nothing unclean nor should she have strong drink.

She speaks of the one who visits her as a "man of God."  She notes he has the countenance of God.  The writer does refer to this visitor as an "angel."

What was he?  Man?  Man of God?  Angel?  Possibly all three.  Who he is may depend upon the way in which the one he visits sees him.

I was in a conversation this past week in which I was asked how we are to know what is God's call to us.  This person longed for the clarity often spoke of in the tales of others in which a voice - as if coming directly from God - is heard.  Judges 13 would have been a good bible reference.

God's word does come to us.  God's call comes.  Sometimes (most of the time) it comes through a messenger sent by God.  Is the messenger an "angel"?  Or a mere mortal?  Maybe both.  Maybe it isn't the vessel which makes the exchange holy, it is the message.  

We are too prone to look for a particular experience as confirmation of God's presence and God's call in our lives.  In doing so, we may miss the clear and unambiguous message God is sending our way.

Judges 13.  Read it at some point today and reflect on the visitors you have had whom you might have dismissed but are now prepared to see with a different set of eyes.