Hallway Meditations (1 Sam. 12)

I’ve had the unusual experience of going back over the last two months. Going back to where I was before the Lord moved me. Going back to the bustle of the classroom. Going back to what I had willingly left behind because there was a need. Admittedly, it has been a challenge and a distraction.

And now I find myself eagerly waiting. Waiting to be released after helping to transition a new teacher into the position I was temporarily (and somewhat reluctantly) holding. Waiting to go back to my “normal” life. For now just, well, waiting. That meme that has made the rounds the past few years about waiting in the hallway for God to open the next door? That has been me this week. 

While I’ve been waiting, I’ve continued reading and studying, the difficulty of which you might not understand unless you’ve ever been in an upper school hallway for any extended amount of time. Older people might remember rooms that quieted with the bell and the teacher’s roll call, but that is rarely the case in today’s schools. It is loud, although that’s not to say it isn’t productive.There are competing voices coming from every direction, the noise level depending on the teacher, the personality of a class, the task at hand. The varying noises range in intensity, some loud, some faint (the faint ones making me want to know what’s being said because I am human and nosy). One minute I will be absolutely focused on what I am reading or writing and the next a quiet voice has drawn me away from the task at hand. The louder noises are a little easier to tune out (and I am honestly very good at tuning out when I have no responsibility or just want to because I’ve trained myself to do so as a reader from a young age). 

One teacher’s voice is louder than the others at any given moment. Like a dance with a pulse, the ebb and wane of student voices act and react to what is going on in their classrooms. Steps come and go down the hall and lockers slam at varying levels after the opening snick and rustle of books and papers, most of which I can’t see around the separation of a set of doors propped open between me and them. 

The intercom drones announcements that, depending on the ambient noise level around me at any given time, might or might not be heard and understood. Doors quietly open and close with the entrance and egress of people, some individually, some in pairs. Then there are the herds of students that quickly and loudly move to the next class after the buzzing of the bell (or the extra one that tinkles now that COVID has made it more desirable to divide the amount of students in the hallway between classes into two separate groups that do not interact). Doors slamming when there is emotion involved. Doors slamming of their own volition. Teachers’s on their planning periods stopping to chat. 

The air conditioning units turn on and off in the classrooms, the newer ones a low hum, the older ones a loud drone. Today it is raining, so there are squeaks to accompany the clicking of boots and heels the older students wear. 

Competing noises. Everywhere. Distracting the sometimes not easily distractible. 

[Detour: the word distractable or distractible, depending on where one lives, comes from the Latin distractus, meaning perplexed, from distrahere, meaning to pull in different directions, from distrahere, meaning to drag. When we allow ourselves to be distracted, we become confused and puzzled and pulled in different directions, pulled away from our focus, from the truth. Interestingly enough, the word tractable means easily led, taught, or managed; docile; governable, especially in the context of a learner according to Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language.]

All this reminds me of what I’ve been reading in 1 Samuel 12 as Samuel reminds the children of Israel why God has now given a king to rule over them: they have become distracted. 

When in Egypt, they cried out to God and He delivered them (v. 8). In their distress, they became very focused on God. But when He delivered them “they forgot the LORD their God” (v. 9), becoming distracted by the ways and worship of those around them, finding them appealing against the instructions and warnings God had already given them. Then God brought the Philistines against them and their focus suddenly returned, and they saw their sin, crying out to the LORD for deliverance (v. 10). And the LORD delivered them, allowing them to once again live in security (v. 11). But as soon as the threat arose once again, these children cried out for a different kind of deliverance, a visible king rather than an invisible LORD (v. 12-13). In choosing a king they could see, they had rejected the LORD their God, whom they could not (1 Sam. 8:7).

They became distracted by the many voices and actions around them and rejected the voice of truth, hearing neither the truth of God’s Word delivered through Samuel or the voice of history that could have taught them truth if they had only looked back as God had commanded them to do over and over again. Only when they were caught in their sin did they bother to look, and then it was only because they feared the consequences of their disobedience (1 Sam. 12:19). 

God’s graciousness never fails to amaze me, whether it is toward me or toward any of His children. Here, His response to these occurences through Samuel was another reminder to stay focused, to not turn aside from following after the LORD, to serve Him whole heartedly (v. 20). And then Samuel says this to the people at God’s direction:

And you must not turn aside, for then you would go after futile things which can not profit or deliver because they are futile. For the LORD will not abandon His people on account of His great name because the LORD has been pleased to make you a people for Himself. (NASB v. 21-22) 

Samuel’s promise to them on his own part was to pray for them faithfully and to instruct them “in the good and right way” (v. 23). Their part was to “fear the LORD and serve Him in truth” with all of their hearts, considering the great things God had already done for them (v. 24). 

They were to be whole-hearted. Devoted. Determined. Focused. All without the distraction of the voices around them, of other gods that seemed to offer attraction and security, the pull of peace, of prosperity. What they couldn’t see, the result of giving in, what humans often fail to see, is that it all leads ultimately to wickedness. 

God had chosen and will always choose of His own will and volition to act towards His chosen people with favor, to act in a certain way with determination, strongly supporting them without distraction, even when they are without merit. God will also always choose to discipline His own, offering them the escape from the temptation of worldly distractions. Through Christ, we too, are the beneficiaries of God’s volition towards His children, and when He extends that love to us and we accept the invitation willingly, we should be whole-hearted in our devotion to Him, our focus undivided, our love undistracted by a world that has nothing for us in comparison to a life lived with Him and for Him forever.