Don't forget your raising...

It was a warm sunny Sunday so we decided to worship outside. Our table, draped in green with the prayer bowl and candle, was against the brick wall and we sat with our backs to the sun. As we waited for Mark to start, Janet and I began a conversation about boundaries. Others joined in. No white shoes after Labor Day... girls can be nurses but not doctors... don’t get above your raising... The consensus was some boundaries are made to be broken but some boundaries are a necessity. This age of few limits and boundaries can be treacherous to navigate without a some fenceposts along the way.
Worship focused on the story of Hannah, her husband, and his other wife, a story that could have been told in one of today’s tabloids. Beloved wife is sterile, second wife bears many children and taunts her rival, husband doesn’t get it, beloved wife prays for deliverance through children and her prayer is answered, she offers her firstborn as a servant to the God who heard her prayer. Mark, who has an eclectic taste in music, played the Dionne Warwick hit song, “I Say a Little Prayer for You” and the group read the drama out loud. I came home and read the rest of the story in First Samuel.
The rest of the story is about God coming to the end of the rope with old Eli’s sons who were breaking all the commandments. Eli was hearing from everybody how bad his boys were. They wouldn’t listen when their daddy tried to rein them in. They were having too much fun living on the wild side. So a man of God came to Eli with a vision he revealed, a vision that told of the death of his sons, “There will not be an old man in your house”, and the beginning of a new priesthood. Enough is enough, said the Lord God.
No instantaneous miraculous death dealing in this story, though. It comes true through the years as Samuel continues to grow up with Eli at the temple. “And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision”. That verse could have been written about my life... no frequent vision, rare connection to the Love of my Life, trouble listening and seeing God at work in the history of my life. Slight break here while I go mop up after the beagle who just threw up after eating a decorative birds nest he filched from the table top...no wonder I have difficulty with my God vision.
God works within the boundaries of time and space, allows the gradual unfolding of his purposes in our lives, lets us have some room to run and some time to find our way back. And when we pray, sometimes the answers to our prayers come in the form of those people of God who are living their lives next to us. The long slow working of God in our lives often cannot be understood until our lives are nearly complete. Like Eli, we hear the voices of the young Samuels around us and say, “Listen to the voice of the Lord and do what seems good.” Remember your raising, don’t wear white after Labor Day and girls can be anything they want to be...