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Judges 15:19-20  Then God opened up the hollow place in Lehi, and water came out of it.  When Samson drank, his strength returned and he revived.  So the spring was called En Hakkore, and it is still there in Lehi.  Samson led Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.

There are many aspects of God’s sovereign providence in the events of our lives, and the lives of friends and family, that really challenge our finite, ‘soft and comfortable’ understanding of his character and its outworking in our world. Sometimes we just have to shrug our shoulders and say, with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him”  (Job 13:15a KJV).

God reminds us in his Word that “we live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7), and that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).  It is with this perspective, and through this lens, that we have to read much of Judges, and especially the life and deeds of Samson.  In a fit of rage he had just killed a thousand Philistines with the ‘jaw-bone of a donkey’ to take revenge for something they’d done to him because of something he’d done to them because of something they’d done to him … … (sounds a bit like immature squabbling children!).  All this strenuous ‘pay back’ effort had given him a hard-earned thirst, so he cried out to the LORD for help.

In spite of the less-than-honourable nature of Samson’s character, his motives and the circumstances that had brought him to this point, God graciously and miraculously answered his prayer, and then went on for the next twenty years to use him as an instrument in caring for his Covenant People!  Samson named God’s providential spring in Lehi, ‘Spring of the One Who Called Out’.

All this is a timely reminder to me that, in spite of all my weaknesses and failings and impure motives and sinful outbursts, all God wants from me is a genuine cry for help and expression of humble dependence on him, and he is still wiling to accept and use my weak efforts to serve him in whatever he calls me to do.  “Jesus said that if I thirst I should come to him; no one else can satisfy, I should come to him. Jesus said, if I am weak I should come to him; no one else can be my strength, I should come to him.  For the Lord is good and faithful, he will keep us day and night; we can always run to Jesus, Jesus, strong and kind” (City Alight).
– Bruce Christian