Our text is all about the...
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Our text is all about the surprising ways in which God operates, how God took the little boy Samuel to become a great prophet. God and life are full of surprises. Charlton Heston said it: "Life is full of surprises, isn't it?"
Surprises in life are good things. It is as modern Catholic theologian Henri Nouwen once wrote: "Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let's not be afraid to receive each day's surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or joy. It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity."
And twentieth-century American anthropologist Ashley Montagu writes: "The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us."
For Martin Luther God's surprising ways are a function of the hidden character of the word. As he put it: "The heritage of Christ is 'splendid' and distinguished inwardly... that is, in mystical and hidden things that were not seen in outward forms..." (Luther's Works, Vol. 10, p. 107).
And as he put it later in his career: "And universally our every assertion of anything good is hidden under the denial of it, so that faith may have its place in God, who is a negative essence of goodness and wisdom and righteousness, who cannot be possessed or touched except by the negation of all our affirmatives" (Ibid., Vol. 25, p. 383).
Surprises in life are good things. It is as modern Catholic theologian Henri Nouwen once wrote: "Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let's not be afraid to receive each day's surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or joy. It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity."
And twentieth-century American anthropologist Ashley Montagu writes: "The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us."
For Martin Luther God's surprising ways are a function of the hidden character of the word. As he put it: "The heritage of Christ is 'splendid' and distinguished inwardly... that is, in mystical and hidden things that were not seen in outward forms..." (Luther's Works, Vol. 10, p. 107).
And as he put it later in his career: "And universally our every assertion of anything good is hidden under the denial of it, so that faith may have its place in God, who is a negative essence of goodness and wisdom and righteousness, who cannot be possessed or touched except by the negation of all our affirmatives" (Ibid., Vol. 25, p. 383).
