We asked ourselves three questions at the close of our previous meditation, based on the Old Testament character of SAMSON:
- How distinctive and different from others is your Christian life?
- Does it encourage others to follow the Lord Jesus Christ?
- If not, where are you going wrong?
If the answers to these questions are not as positive as we would like them to be, a consideration of SAMSON’S way of life could well give us valuable food for thought and bring about a change:
- Maybe we confuse ‘separationism’ and ‘isolationism’. Samson was not an isolate. He was certainly not called upon to live the monastic life. Like Jesus’ disciples, he was ‘in the world’; however, unlike them, he failed far too often to grasp the dividing line between being ‘in it, but not of it’.
- Maybe we fail to understand the true meaning of ‘separation’ in the life of Christians. We frequently surround it with a host of negatives about what we must NOT do and places where we must NOT be found. An overemphasis on the negatives to the almost total exclusion of the positives, can produce a feeling of being in a vacuum, which leaves us dissatisfied and looking back longingly to the past that we thought we had left behind. There were, of course, many things that Nazarites, like Samson, had to shun during the time of their vow; however, it was essentially a positive vow: ‘All the days of his separation he shall be holy to the Lord’, Numbers chapter 6 verse 8. The same thing applies to us as Christians today. We would do well to meditate upon whether we have the correct balance between the negatives and the positives in our life as a Christian. Only then will we benefit, as individuals, and also set the right example for others to follow.
To be continued…