Samuel

BY Erin Davis

I was in the sixth grade the first time I felt a desire to open my Bible on my own. I’d had a particularly rough day at school (aren’t middle school girls the worst?), and as I sobbed into my New Kids on the Block pillow, suddenly my pink Precious Moments Bible seemed to call to me from the bookshelf. It wasn’t an audible sound, just a subtle heart tug toward the Word of God I’d never felt before that moment. I didn’t know a psalm from a proverb, couldn’t articulate the gospel, and had no way of knowing how God’s Word would eventually transform me. I just knew I needed comfort and thought the Bible might be a straw worth grasping for.

A tiny spark was kindled, but the ember was enough to keep me reading through middle school and into high school, when I would eventually surrender my life to Christ. The spark is now a bonfire that consumes my life. Like the psalmist, I declare, “Instruction from your lips is better for me than thousands of gold and silver pieces” (Psalm 119:72). God’s Word is my greatest treasure.

The Bible tells us, “Samuel did not yet know the Lord, because the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him” (1 Samuel 3:7). And yet the Lord was clearly speaking to the boy. Though Samuel’s inexperience with the voice of God made him slow to respond, the Lord kept patiently nudging until eventually, “Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and he fulfilled everything Samuel prophesied. All Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a confirmed prophet of the Lord” (vv.19–20).

He is the hound of heaven. He pursues us when we are still running in glad rebellion. He woos us when our hearts are still turned toward lesser loves. He shepherds before we, His sheep, can distinguish the sound of His voice. Truly, “God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Samuel learned to serve the God who speaks. I have learned to love the One whose story I first glimpsed in the pages of a little pink Bible. It’s true that when we seek, we find Him. And when we knock, He always opens the door (Matthew 7:7–8). But the Lord, in His kindness, also whispers to us before our hearts know how to listen. He loves us, even if our hearts are too broken to love Him back (1 John 4:9). Because He speaks, we can know Him—and that is a reason to rejoice.