Real Heroes Sometimes Fall
Happy Father's day celebrations to all fathers on steemit.
One of my favorite Bible stories when I was little was the story of Samson. Now, when I was young, I had a different reason for liking the story then I do now. I was a very small child. The thought of being a strong and powerful hero was very exciting. Now that I am an adult, I see the story a bit differently. I see it as the story of a hero who kept falling down. Judges 13-16 tells us Samson’s story.
We read about how his life was called to be different before he was ever born. Verse 19 tells us, “Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power.” Not only was Samson strong, but he also had the Spirit of God adding to that strength. God had purposed him to defeat Israel’s enemy, the Philistines, and given him the power to do it. Unfortunately, Samson had a weakness for women, and they caused him to fall on more than one occasion.
Judges 16:21-22 tells us: “Then she (Delilah) called, ‘Samson, the Philistines are upon you!’ He awoke from his sleep and thought, ‘I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.’ But he did not know that the Lord had left him. Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison. But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.” We could write Samson off at this point. We could say that God would never again listen to his prayers. We could, but we would be wrong. Yes, Samson fell, and he fell hard. We don’t know exactly what went through Samson’s mind as he sat in the Philistine dungeon, but at some point, he allowed God to pick him back up again. We know that because at the end of Samson’s life he prayed, and God listened.
John Davis and Herbert Wolf explained Samson’s final moments like this: “If the Nazirite vow was violated and the uncut hair marking special dedication to God had become ‘defiled,’ that hair had to be cut off and the period of special consecration started all over again. The Nazirite ‘must dedicate himself to the Lord again for the period of his vowed separation’… When Samson’s hair of dedication was cut off by Delilah, God showed that it had been defiled by Samson’s many defiling acts and was not acceptable to Him. But when his hair ‘began to grow again,’ a new time of Samson’s consecration began again. Samson, however, had no lamb to offer God as a guilt offering, and he had no lifetime to consecrate to the Lord. But he could offer up his life as God’s champion warrior against the Philistine. And that is what he did.”